title: The falsifiability of actual decision-making models.
abstract: Jones and Dzhafarov (2014) provided a useful service in pointing out that some assumptions of modern decision-making models require additional scrutiny. Their main result, however, is not surprising: If an infinitely complex model was created by assigning its parameters arbitrarily flexible distributions, this new model would be able to fit any observed data perfectly. Such a hypothetical model would be unfalsifiable. This is exactly why such models have never been proposed in over half a century of model development in decision making. Additionally, the main conclusion drawn from this result-that the success of existing decision-making models can be attributed to assumptions about parameter distributions-is wrong. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved).
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Newcastle.
authors.forename: Andrew
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Heathcote
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, University of Amsterdam.
authors.forename: E-J
authors.initials: EJ
authors.lastname: Wagenmakers
authors.affiliation: School of Psychology, University of Newcastle.
authors.forename: Scott D
authors.initials: SD
authors.lastname: Brown
mesh_terms: D003657:Decision Making; D006801:Humans; D008960:Models, Psychological