Abstract

This article provides an overview of the EPIC architecture being developed by Kieras and Meyer for modeling human cognition and performance (Kieras, Wood, & Meyer, 1997; Meyer & Kieras, 1997a, 1997b). EPIC is similar in spirit to the Model Human Processor (MHP; Card, Moran, & Newell, 1983), but EPIC incorporates many recent theoretical and empiri- cal results about human performance in the form of a software framework for computer simulation modeling. Using EPIC, a model can be con- structed that represents the general procedures required to perform a complex multimodal task a a set of production rules. When the model is supplied with the external stimuli for a specffic task, it will then execute the procedures in whatever way the task requires, thus simulating a human 's performing the task and generating the predicted actions in simulated real time. EPIC is an architecture for constructing models of 394 performance. It is notet a learning system and so has no mechanisms for learning how to perform a task. Rather, the purpose of EPIC is to repre- sent in detail the perceptual, motor, and cognitive constraints on the human ability to perform tasks

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