An introduction to good practices in cognitive modeling

Abstract

Cognitive modeling can provide important insights into the underlying causes of behavior, but the validity of those insights rests on careful model development and checking. We provide guidelines on five important aspects of the practice of cognitive modeling: parameter recovery, testing selective influence of experimental manipulations on model parameters, quantifying uncertainty in parameter estimates, testing and displaying model fit, and selecting among different model parameterizations and types of models. Each aspect is illustrated with examples.