Does Spatial Cognition Emerge in Frontier Models?
Authors: name: Santhosh Kumar Ramakrishnan, name: Erik Wijmans, name: Philipp Kraehenbuehl, name: Vladlen Koltun

Not yet. We present SPACE, a benchmark that systematically evaluates spatial
cognition in frontier models. Our benchmark builds on decades of research in
cognitive science. It evaluates large-scale mapping abilities that are brought
to bear when an organism traverses physical environments, smaller-scale
reasoning about object shapes and layouts, and cognitive infrastructure such as
spatial attention and memory. For many tasks, we instantiate parallel
presentations via text and images, allowing us to benchmark both large language
models and large multimodal models. Results suggest that contemporary frontier
models fall short of the spatial intelligence of animals, performing near
chance level on a number of classic tests of animal cognition.