@inproceedings{wang-etal-2025-role,
title = "On the Role of Entity and Event Level Conceptualization in Generalizable Reasoning: A Survey of Tasks, Methods, Applications, and Future Directions",
author = "Wang, Weiqi and
Fang, Tianqing and
Shi, Haochen and
Xu, Baixuan and
Ding, Wenxuan and
Zhang, Liyu and
Fan, Wei and
Bai, Jiaxin and
Li, Haoran and
Liu, Xin and
Song, Yangqiu",
editor = "Christodoulopoulos, Christos and
Chakraborty, Tanmoy and
Rose, Carolyn and
Peng, Violet",
booktitle = "Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025",
month = nov,
year = "2025",
address = "Suzhou, China",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-emnlp.122/",
pages = "2260--2281",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-335-7",
abstract = "Conceptualization, a fundamental element of human cognition, plays a pivotal role in human generalizable reasoning.Generally speaking, it refers to the process of sequentially abstracting specific instances into higher-level concepts and then forming abstract knowledge that can be applied in unfamiliar or novel situations. This enhances models' inferential capabilities and supports the effective transfer of knowledge across various domains.Despite its significance, the broad nature of this term has led to inconsistencies in understanding conceptualization across various works, as there exists different types of instances that can be abstracted in a wide variety of ways.There is also a lack of a systematic overview that comprehensively examines existing works on the definition, execution, and application of conceptualization to enhance reasoning tasks.In this paper, we address these gaps by first proposing a categorization of different types of conceptualizations into four levels based on the types of instances being conceptualized, in order to clarify the term and define the scope of our work.Then, we present the first comprehensive survey of over 150 papers, surveying various definitions, resources, methods, and downstream applications related to conceptualization into a unified taxonomy, with a focus on the entity and event levels.Furthermore, we shed light on potential future directions in this field and hope to garner more attention from the community."
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<abstract>Conceptualization, a fundamental element of human cognition, plays a pivotal role in human generalizable reasoning.Generally speaking, it refers to the process of sequentially abstracting specific instances into higher-level concepts and then forming abstract knowledge that can be applied in unfamiliar or novel situations. This enhances models’ inferential capabilities and supports the effective transfer of knowledge across various domains.Despite its significance, the broad nature of this term has led to inconsistencies in understanding conceptualization across various works, as there exists different types of instances that can be abstracted in a wide variety of ways.There is also a lack of a systematic overview that comprehensively examines existing works on the definition, execution, and application of conceptualization to enhance reasoning tasks.In this paper, we address these gaps by first proposing a categorization of different types of conceptualizations into four levels based on the types of instances being conceptualized, in order to clarify the term and define the scope of our work.Then, we present the first comprehensive survey of over 150 papers, surveying various definitions, resources, methods, and downstream applications related to conceptualization into a unified taxonomy, with a focus on the entity and event levels.Furthermore, we shed light on potential future directions in this field and hope to garner more attention from the community.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T On the Role of Entity and Event Level Conceptualization in Generalizable Reasoning: A Survey of Tasks, Methods, Applications, and Future Directions
%A Wang, Weiqi
%A Fang, Tianqing
%A Shi, Haochen
%A Xu, Baixuan
%A Ding, Wenxuan
%A Zhang, Liyu
%A Fan, Wei
%A Bai, Jiaxin
%A Li, Haoran
%A Liu, Xin
%A Song, Yangqiu
%Y Christodoulopoulos, Christos
%Y Chakraborty, Tanmoy
%Y Rose, Carolyn
%Y Peng, Violet
%S Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025
%D 2025
%8 November
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Suzhou, China
%@ 979-8-89176-335-7
%F wang-etal-2025-role
%X Conceptualization, a fundamental element of human cognition, plays a pivotal role in human generalizable reasoning.Generally speaking, it refers to the process of sequentially abstracting specific instances into higher-level concepts and then forming abstract knowledge that can be applied in unfamiliar or novel situations. This enhances models’ inferential capabilities and supports the effective transfer of knowledge across various domains.Despite its significance, the broad nature of this term has led to inconsistencies in understanding conceptualization across various works, as there exists different types of instances that can be abstracted in a wide variety of ways.There is also a lack of a systematic overview that comprehensively examines existing works on the definition, execution, and application of conceptualization to enhance reasoning tasks.In this paper, we address these gaps by first proposing a categorization of different types of conceptualizations into four levels based on the types of instances being conceptualized, in order to clarify the term and define the scope of our work.Then, we present the first comprehensive survey of over 150 papers, surveying various definitions, resources, methods, and downstream applications related to conceptualization into a unified taxonomy, with a focus on the entity and event levels.Furthermore, we shed light on potential future directions in this field and hope to garner more attention from the community.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-emnlp.122/
%P 2260-2281
Markdown (Informal)
[On the Role of Entity and Event Level Conceptualization in Generalizable Reasoning: A Survey of Tasks, Methods, Applications, and Future Directions](https://aclanthology.org/2025.findings-emnlp.122/) (Wang et al., Findings 2025)
ACL
- Weiqi Wang, Tianqing Fang, Haochen Shi, Baixuan Xu, Wenxuan Ding, Liyu Zhang, Wei Fan, Jiaxin Bai, Haoran Li, Xin Liu, and Yangqiu Song. 2025. On the Role of Entity and Event Level Conceptualization in Generalizable Reasoning: A Survey of Tasks, Methods, Applications, and Future Directions. In Findings of the Association for Computational Linguistics: EMNLP 2025, pages 2260–2281, Suzhou, China. Association for Computational Linguistics.