Progress in understanding word reading: Data fitting vs. theory building

Computational modelling is a tool that can be used in different ways for different purposes. There are several distinct styles of modelling research in cognitive science and neuroscience, with differing goals, methods, and evaluation criteria. Nowhere is this clearer that in the area of lexical processing in reading, in which computational models have played a prominent role for over 25 years. In this chapter, we examine two contrasting approaches to computational models of reading, the dual-route approach developed by Max Coltheart and his colleagues, and the parallel distributed processing (PDP) approach developed by ourselves, James L. McClelland, and others. These approaches have spawned a series of implemented models (including Coltheart, Curtis