The cognitive modeling of human behavior: Why a model is (sometimes) better than 10,000 words

This special issue of Cognitive Systems Research presents a collection of remarkable papers on cognitive modeling based on Communications delivered at ICCM-2006, thè Seventh International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (Fum, Del Missier, & Stocco, 2006) held in Trieste, Italy, from Aprii 5th to 8th, 2006. Being thè organizers and chairmen of thè conference, we have been invited to serve as guest editors for this issue. We therefore solicited some participants to reexamine their contributions, and to change them in form of Journal articles. In particular, we asked authors to review what they had presented during thè conference focusing on thè benefits cognitive modeling could provide to cognitive science. The issue you are reading is thè result of this editorial process. In this introductory commentary we would like to set thè stage for what follows by illustrating thè advantages and disadvantages of cognitive modeling, and by presenting a minimal set of requirements for a good modeling practice. Then, we will briefly preview thè papers composing this special issue, and we will emphasize how they deal with thè issues discussed in thè previous sections.