Abraham Ur Rahman
Author directory2026
Measuring the Impact of LLM-Generated Scientific Summaries for Neurodivergent Readers
Abraham Ur Rahman | Skyler Koba | Audrey Michal | Steven R Wilson
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact (NLP4PI)
Abraham Ur Rahman | Skyler Koba | Audrey Michal | Steven R Wilson
Proceedings of the Fifth Workshop on NLP for Positive Impact (NLP4PI)
Language technologies increasingly mediate access to scientific information, yet their impact depends on whether they improve real reading experiences for diverse audiences. We study large language model (LLM)-generated scientific summaries as an accessibility intervention for neurodivergent adults, focusing on readers with ADHD and/or autism. Using a mixed-methods design, we first conducted a formative qualitative study with 10 neurodivergent adults to identify design needs. We then ran a quantitative experiment with 200 neurodivergent adults comparing five summary styles across lower- and higher-complexity scientific texts, measuring comprehension, trust, engagement, and cognitive load. Results show that writing-style effects depend on text complexity: structured LLM-generated summaries improved comprehension for higher-complexity articles but reduced comprehension for lower-complexity articles relative to a baseline human-generated extractive summary. Trust increased for simpler LLM summary styles, while engagement and cognitive load showed fewer robust writing-style effects. Our findings suggest that accessible NLP systems should adapt explanatory support to reader needs and text difficulty, rather than offering a single “best” summary style.