Research

Working papers, analyses, and technical investigations. Not peer-reviewed.

The Etymology Tax: Etymological Register Effects on LLM Multi-Step Reasoning

Ashita Orbis | March 6, 2026 | 41 min read | working-paper

This study tests whether the etymological register of input text affects large language model performance on multi-step reasoning tasks. Using 250 murder mystery narratives from the MuSR benchmark, eight models were evaluated across six conditions in a 2x3 factorial design crossing vocabulary register (baseline, Germanic, Latinate) with explicit clarification (present, absent). Both Germanic and L...

Convergent AI-Mediated Personality Assessment: Psychometric Profiling and Narrative Inference from Digital Communication Data

Ashita Orbis | March 3, 2026 | 91 min read | working-paper

This paper examines the convergence between two AI-mediated approaches to personality assessment applied to a single participant: explicit psychometric measurement through seventeen validated instruments triangulated across three inference methods, and implicit personality inference through literary narrative generation from a 267MB text messaging archive. The explicit approach (Psyche) produced a...