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Leonardo Bertolazzi
Ph.D., University of Trento
leonardo.bertolazzi@unitn.it

Ciao, I’m Leonardo! I’m a PhD student in Information Engineering and Computer Science at University of Trento, supervised by Prof. Raffaella Bernardi.

My research focuses on the reasoning capabilities of Large Language Models (LLMs) at the intersection of AI and cognitive science.

I’m passionate about exploring topics such as:

  1. LLM Reasoning Processes: How do LLMs perform reasoning tasks? What computational mechanisms underlie their reasoning processes, and how do these mechanisms compare to formal logic systems or human-like reasoning?

  2. Behavioral Analysis of LLMs: Inspired by cognitive psychology, can we use systematic behavioral experiments to analyze and interpret the decision-making processes of LLMs? What insights can this provide into their strengths and limitations?

  3. Comparative Analysis of Biases: What biases emerge in LLMs, and how do they compare to human cognitive biases? Are there biases unique to LLMs that arise from their architecture or training data?

If you have any questions about my research or if you’re interested in collaborating, feel free to reach out!

Interests

  • Language Models
  • Reasoning
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Cognitive Science
  • Machine Learning

Academia

University of Trento
2023 - present
Ph.D. Information Engineering and Computer Science
University of Trento
2021 - 2023
M.Sc. Cognitive Science
University of Trento
2019 - 2021
B.A. Philosophy

News

Recent Publications

see my google scholar for the latest list
The Validation Gap: A Mechanistic Analysis of How Language Models Compute Arithmetic but Fail to Validate It, 2025, arXiv preprint
Leonardo Bertolazzi , Philipp Mondorf , Barbara Plank , Raffaella Bernardi
LLMs instead of Human Judges? A Large Scale Empirical Study across 20 NLP Evaluation Tasks, 2024, arXiv preprint
Anna Bavaresco , Raffaella Bernardi , Leonardo Bertolazzi , Desmond Elliott , Raquel Fernández , Albert Gatt , Esam Ghaleb , Mario Giulianelli , Michael Hanna , Alexander Koller , André F. T. Martins , Philipp Mondorf , Vera Neplenbroek , Sandro Pezzelle , Barbara Plank , David Schlangen , Alessandro Suglia , Aditya K Surikuchi , Ece Takmaz , Alberto Testoni
A Systematic Analysis of Large Language Models as Soft Reasoners: The Case of Syllogistic Inferences, 2024, The 2024 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing
Leonardo Bertolazzi , Albert Gatt , Raffaella Bernardi
ChatGPT’s Information Seeking Strategy: Insights from the 20-Questions Game, 2023, Proceedings of the 16th International Natural Language Generation Conference
Leonardo Bertolazzi , Davide Mazzaccara , Filippo Merlo , Raffaella Bernardi