Behind the Scenes of an Evolving Event Cloze Test

This paper analyzes the narrative event cloze test and its recent evolution. The test removes one event from a document’s chain of events, and systems predict the missing event. Originally proposed to evaluate learned knowledge of event scenarios (e.g., scripts and frames), most recent work now builds ngramlike language models (LM) to beat the test. This paper argues that the test has slowly/unknowingly been altered to accommodate LMs. Most notably, tests are auto-generated rather than by hand, and no effort is taken to include core script events. Recent work is not clear on evaluation goals and contains contradictory results. We implement several models, and show that the test’s bias to high-frequency events explains the inconsistencies. We conclude with recommendations on how to return to the test’s original intent, and offer brief suggestions on a path forward.