The Role of Computational Models in Investigating Typical and Pathological Behaviors

ABSTRACT

The use of computational models to simulate unimpaired human psychological behavior is now fairly common, and use of such models to simulate impaired behavior has also increased. In this article I discuss the relation of computational models to behavioral investigation and to theory, with a view to clarifying what a computational model is, and what its value may be in investigating unimpaired and pathological human psychological behavior.

KEYWORDS

Computational models - simulation - cognitive behavior - language pathology - multiple determination

REFERENCES

• 1 Gathercole S E. Nonword repetition and word learning: the nature of the relationship.  Appl Psycholinguist. 2006;  27 513-543
• 2 Raymer A M, Beeson P, Holland A et al.. Translational research in aphasia: from neuroscience to neurorehabilitation.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2008;  51 S259-S275
• 3 Dell G S. A spreading activation theory of retrieval in sentence production.  Psychol Rev. 1986;  93 283-321
• 4 Gupta P, Cohen N J. Theoretical and computational analysis of skill learning, repetition priming, and procedural memory.  Psychol Rev. 2002;  109 401-448
• 5 Rumelhart D E, McClelland J L. Learning the past tenses of English verbs: implicit rules or parallel distributed processes?. In: MacWhinney B Mechanisms of Language Acquisition. Mahwah, NJ; Erlbaum 1987
• 6 Rumelhart D E, McClelland J L. Parallel Distributed Processing. Vol. 1: Foundations. Cambridge, MA; MIT Press 1986
• 7 Hinton G E, Shallice T. Lesioning an attractor network: investigations of acquired dyslexia.  Psychol Rev. 1991;  98 74-95
• 8 Dell G S, Schwartz M F, Martin N, Saffran E M, Gagnon D A. Lexical access in normal and aphasic speakers.  Psychol Rev. 1997;  104 801-838
• 9 Botvinick M M, Plaut D C. Short-term memory for serial order: a recurrent neural network model.  Psychol Rev. 2006;  113 201-233
• 10 Rumelhart D, Hinton G, Williams R. Learning internal representations by error propagation. In: Rumelhart D, McClelland J Parallel Distributed Processing Vol. 1: Foundations. Cambridge, MA; MIT Press 1986
• 11 Gathercole S E, Willis C S, Emslie H, Baddeley A D. Phonological memory and vocabulary development during the early school years: a longitudinal study.  Dev Psychol. 1992;  28 887-898
• 12 Gupta P. Primacy and recency in nonword repetition.  Memory. 2005;  13 318-324
• 13 Gupta P, Lipinski J, Abbs B, Lin P-H. Serial position effects in nonword repetition.  J Mem Lang. 2005;  53 141-162
• 14 Gathercole S E. Is nonword repetition a test of phonological memory or long term knowledge? It all depends on the nonwords.  Mem Cognit. 1995;  23 83-94
• 15 Munson B, Kurtz B A, Windsor J. The influence of vocabulary size, phonotactic probability, and wordlikeness on nonword repetition of children with and without specific language impairment.  J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2005;  48 1033-1047
• 16 Gathercole S E, Willis C, Emslie H, Baddeley A D. The influences of number of syllables and wordlikeness on children's repetition of nonwords.  Appl Psycholinguist. 1991;  12 349-367
• 17 Ullman M T, Pierpoint E I. Specific language impairment is not specific to language: the procedural deficit hypothesis.  Cortex. 2005;  41 399-433

1 It may be worth noting that a mathematical model is a particular type of computational model, in which the behavior of the model can be fully described in terms of an equation or set of equations. This property is not typically true of other types of computational models. There are also certain other typical differences between mathematical and other computational models, but discussion of these is beyond the scope of the present article.