Bridging the gap between theory and model: a reflection on the balance scale task

Abstract

At first glance, the two lead articles in this issue share little except the balance scale task, yet we view them as complementary rather than unrelated or contradictory. Our Reflection focuses on the individual strengths of the two lead articles and, to a greater extent, the potential power of their combined perspectives. Our general approach is to allow psychological theory to suggest a model of performance that can both evaluate specific theoretical claims and reveal important features of the data that had been previously obscured using conventional statistical analyses. Our guiding principle is that model, theory, and data all should be connected.