Deductive Modeling of Human Cognition

Abstract

Deductive analysis (DA) is presented as an approach to the study and simulation of human cognitive processes. DA is composed of a Psychological theory and a methodology that can sheed light on mental phenomenas. The cognitive theory is embedded in the problem space and the control structure hypotheses. The methodology consists of logical derivations of computer models from an abstract specification. The item-recognition task and the three-term series task are analyzed for purpose of illustration. Several aspects of human cognition in these environments are discussed. It is argued that DA brings new notions to the study of human cognition, for instance, to design sets of models and to distinguish between empirically equivalent models.