A tutorial on Bayesian inference for dynamical modeling of eye-movement control during reading

Abstract

Dynamical models are crucial for developing process-oriented, quantitative theories in cognition and behavior. Due to the impressive progress in cognitive theory, domain-specific dynamical models are complex, which typically creates challenges in statistical inference. Mathematical models of eye-movement control might be looked upon as a representative case study. In this tutorial, we introduce and analyze the SWIFT model (Engbert et al., 2002; Engbert et al., 2005), a dynamical modeling framework for eye-movement control in reading that was developed to explain all types of saccades observed in experiments from an activation-based approach. We provide an introduction to dynamical modeling, which explains the basic concepts of SWIFT and its statistical inference. We discuss the likelihood function of a simplified version of the SWIFT model as a key foundation for Bayesian parameter estimation (Rabe et al., 2021; Seelig et al., 2019). In posterior predictive checks, we demonstrate that the simplified model can reproduce interindividual differences via parameter variation. All computations in this tutorial are implemented in the R-Language for Statistical Computing and are made publicly available. We expect that the tutorial might be helpful for advancing dynamical models in other areas of cognitive science.