Evaluating Model Alignment with Human Perception: A Study on Shitsukan in LLMs and LVLMs

Daiki Shiono, Ana Brassard, Yukiko Ishizuki, Jun Suzuki


Abstract
We evaluate the alignment of large language models (LLMs) and large vision-language models (LVLMs) with human perception, focusing on the Japanese concept of shitsukan, which reflects the sensory experience of perceiving objects. We created a dataset of shitsukan terms elicited from individuals in response to object images. With it, we designed benchmark tasks for three dimensions of understanding shitsukan: (1) accurate perception in object images, (2) commonsense knowledge of typical shitsukan terms for objects, and (3) distinction of valid shitsukan terms. Models demonstrated mixed accuracy across benchmark tasks, with limited overlap between model- and human-generated terms. However, manual evaluations revealed that the model-generated terms were still natural to humans. This work identifies gaps in culture-specific understanding and contributes to aligning models with human sensory perception. We publicly release the dataset to encourage further research in this area.
Anthology ID:
2025.coling-main.757
Volume:
Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics
Month:
January
Year:
2025
Address:
Abu Dhabi, UAE
Editors:
Owen Rambow, Leo Wanner, Marianna Apidianaki, Hend Al-Khalifa, Barbara Di Eugenio, Steven Schockaert
Venue:
COLING
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
11428–11444
Language:
URL:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-nlpsi/2025.coling-main.757/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Daiki Shiono, Ana Brassard, Yukiko Ishizuki, and Jun Suzuki. 2025. Evaluating Model Alignment with Human Perception: A Study on Shitsukan in LLMs and LVLMs. In Proceedings of the 31st International Conference on Computational Linguistics, pages 11428–11444, Abu Dhabi, UAE. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
Evaluating Model Alignment with Human Perception: A Study on Shitsukan in LLMs and LVLMs (Shiono et al., COLING 2025)
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PDF:
https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-nlpsi/2025.coling-main.757.pdf