Cultural Moment Benchmark: Evaluating Video Cultural Reasoning and Grounding in Southeast Asia
Paper • 2608.23065 • Published
Dataset Viewer
The dataset viewer is not available for this split.
Cannot extract the features (columns) for the split 'sample' of the config 'sample_concepts' of the dataset.
Error code: FeaturesError
Exception: ArrowInvalid
Message: JSON parse error: Invalid value. in row 0
Traceback: Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 324, in _generate_tables
df = pandas_read_json(f)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 38, in pandas_read_json
return pd.read_json(path_or_buf, **kwargs)
~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 815, in read_json
return json_reader.read()
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1014, in read
obj = self._get_object_parser(self.data)
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1040, in _get_object_parser
obj = FrameParser(json, **kwargs).parse()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1176, in parse
self._parse()
~~~~~~~~~~~^^
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/pandas/io/json/_json.py", line 1392, in _parse
ujson_loads(json, precise_float=self.precise_float), dtype=None
~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
ValueError: Expected object or value
During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/src/services/worker/src/worker/job_runners/split/first_rows.py", line 244, in compute_first_rows_from_streaming_response
iterable_dataset = iterable_dataset._resolve_features()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/iterable_dataset.py", line 4408, in _resolve_features
features = _infer_features_from_batch(self.with_format(None)._head())
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/iterable_dataset.py", line 2679, in _head
return next(iter(self.iter(batch_size=n)))
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/iterable_dataset.py", line 2861, in iter
for key, pa_table in ex_iterable.iter_arrow():
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/iterable_dataset.py", line 2395, in _iter_arrow
yield from self.ex_iterable._iter_arrow()
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/iterable_dataset.py", line 536, in _iter_arrow
for key, pa_table in iterator:
^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/iterable_dataset.py", line 419, in _iter_arrow
for key, pa_table in self.generate_tables_fn(**gen_kwags):
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 327, in _generate_tables
raise e
File "/usr/local/lib/python3.14/site-packages/datasets/packaged_modules/json/json.py", line 290, in _generate_tables
pa_table = paj.read_json(
io.BytesIO(batch), read_options=paj.ReadOptions(block_size=block_size)
)
File "pyarrow/_json.pyx", line 342, in pyarrow._json.read_json
File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 155, in pyarrow.lib.pyarrow_internal_check_status
return check_status(status)
File "pyarrow/error.pxi", line 92, in pyarrow.lib.check_status
raise convert_status(status)
pyarrow.lib.ArrowInvalid: JSON parse error: Invalid value. in row 0Need help to make the dataset viewer work? Make sure to review how to configure the dataset viewer, and open a discussion for direct support.
Cultural Moment Benchmark (CMB)
CMB evaluates how vision-language models reason about cultural moments in video across Southeast Asia. Each concept is tested in three stages: naming the concept, recognizing it visually in video, and temporally localizing its sub-events, under three context modes (Reset, Carry, Feedback).
The benchmark covers 306 expert-curated concepts from seven countries in Southeast Asia across five categories, drawn from 624 source videos, with 631 temporal localization pairs.
Available now: one sample concept, end to end. It is the walkthrough concept from the project page: Nyepi (Indonesia, Celebration). The full 306-concept release is in preparation.
The benchmark ships annotations only. Source videos are not redistributed; the mapping of benchmark filenames to YouTube sources will be included in the full release.
Sample files
data/sample/celebration_mcq.json: the Stage 1 and Stage 2 MCQ entry for the sample concept, in the same per-category format as the full release (keyed by concept name).data/sample/mcq_list.jsonl: the same MCQ entries flattened to one record per concept, for the dataset viewer.data/sample/vmr_videos.csv: Stage 3 temporal localization rows, one question per video, as on the project page (video filename, sub-event question, start and end times).data/sample/cultural_concepts.csv: naming variants for each concept (common/official, Latin/local script).
Note: this sample is for exploring the data format. Results on the sample are not comparable to results on the full benchmark.
Key Resources
- Paper (EMNLP 2026)
- Project Page and Leaderboard
- Seeing Culture Benchmark (SCB), our image benchmark
Citation
@misc{satar2026cultural,
title={Cultural Moment Benchmark: Evaluating Video Cultural Reasoning and Grounding in Southeast Asia},
author={Burak Satar and Zhixin Ma and Yu-Tong Cheng and Huy Hoang Tran and Phuong Anh Nguyen and Chong-Wah Ngo},
year={2026},
eprint={2608.23065},
archivePrefix={arXiv},
url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23065}
}
- Downloads last month
- 73