This special issue of Cognitive Systems Research presents a collection of remarkable papers on cognitive modeling based on communications delivered at ICCM-2006, the Seventh International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (Fum, Del Missier, & Stocco, 2006) held in Trieste, Italy, from April 5th to 8th, 2006. Being the organizers and chairmen of the conference, we have been invited to serve as gu...

This paper presents an implementation of a cognitive model of a complex real-world task in the cognitive architecture Soar. During the implementation process there were lessons learned on various aspects, such as the retrieval of working memory elements with relative values, alternative approaches to reasoning, and reasoning control. Additionally, the implementation is compared to an earlier im...

This chapter presents a cognitive-developmental model for understanding borderline personality disorder (BPD) and describes how it may be used in conceptualizing and treating this disorder. The model represents an extension of standard cognitive and schema-focused models. It is developmental in that it postulates that BPD stems from (1) biological and genetic propensities toward affect dysregul...

Diagnosis is the foundation of medicine. Effective treatment cannot begin until an accurate diagnosis has been made. Diagnostic reasoning is a critical aspect of clinical performance. It is vulnerable to a variety of failings, the most prevalent arising through cognitive and affective influences. The impact of diagnostic failure on patient safety does not appear to have been fully recognized. I...

Cognitive diagnostic modeling has become an exciting new field of psychometric research. These models aim to diagnose examinees’ mastery status of a group of discretely defined skills, or attributes, thereby providing them with detailed information regarding their specific strengths and weaknesses. Combining cognitive diagnosis with computer adaptive assessments has emerged as an important part...

Background & Aims: Trichotillomania (TTM) is an unknown disorder and resistant to treatment. The purpose of this study was to develop and validate the new metacognitive-cognitive-behavioral model for trichotillomania. Methods: The present study was a description and correlation study. In this study, 635 participants (304 male and 331 female) were selected. The participants completed the Massach...

BACKGROUND/AIMS Many cognitive screening instruments (CSI) are available to clinicians to assess cognitive function. The optimal method comparing the diagnostic utility of such tests is uncertain. The effect size (Cohen's d), calculated as the difference of the means of two groups divided by the weighted pooled standard deviations of these groups, may permit such comparisons. METHODS Datasets...

The concept of cognitive impairment intervening between normal ageing and very early dementia has been in the literature for many years. Recently, the construct of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) has been proposed to designate an early, but abnormal, state of cognitive impairment. MCI has generated a great deal of research from both clinical and research perspectives. Numerous epidemiological s...

Reasoning Test The ART was developed by Embretson (1995) using the cognitive design system approach. ART items are matrix completion problems. Matrix completion problems appear on a variety of intelligence and ability tests. They are considered a stable measure of fluid intelligence (Raven, 1965). Construct Validity and Cognitive Diagnostic Assessment 133 Embretson (1995, 1998) further develope...