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, th\ue8 Seventh International Conference on Cognitive Modeling (Fum, Del Missier, & Stocco, 2006) held in Trieste, Italy, from Aprii 5th to 8th, 2006. Being th\ue8 organizers and chairmen of th\ue8 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 th\ue8 conference focusing on th\ue8 benefits cognitive modeling could provide to cognitive science. The issue you are reading is th\ue8 result of this editorial process. In this introductory commentary we would like to set th\ue8 stage for what follows by illustrating th\ue8 advantages and disadvantages of cognitive modeling, and by presenting a minimal set of requirements for a good modeling practice. Then, we will briefly preview th\ue8 papers composing this special issue, and we will emphasize how they deal with th\ue8 issues discussed in th\ue8 previous sections