A Foundation Model to Predict and Capture Human Cognition

A Nature paper on a foundation model built to predict and capture human cognition. The companion cites its finding that a model trained on data from 160 psychology experiments predicted human choices better than cognitive science's domain-specific models in all but one experiment tested. It is the evidence that the organisms' substrates may out-model their observers, the premise of studying up (P11).

Cited in

both papers (Flagship: Fig. 4; Companion §8, Fig. 8)

Used for

P11P11; Companion Fig. 8a (Flagship Fig. 4a)

Strand

Studying up: reflexivity, observation & method · Machine behaviour & machine models of humans

Cite

@article{binz2025foundation,
  title = {A Foundation Model to Predict and Capture Human Cognition},
  author = {Marcel Binz and Elif Akata and Matthias Bethge and Franziska Brändle and Fred Callaway and Julian Coda-Forno and et al.},
  year = {2025},
  journal = {Nature},
  doi = {10.1038/s41586-025-09215-4},
}