What is the role of computational models in Cognitive Science? A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the history of the TRACE model of speech segmentation
Manisha Chawla, Richard C. Shillcock · 2019
Implemented computational models are a central paradigm of Cognitive Science. How do cognitive scientists really use such models? We take the example of one of the most successful and influential cognitive models, TRACE (McClelland & Elman, 1986), and we map its impact on the field in terms of published, electronically available documents that cite the original TRACE paper over a period of 25 years since its publication. We draw conclusions about the general status of computational cognitive modelling and make critical suggestions regarding the nature of abstraction in computational modelling.