The Brain, Cognition, and Action Laboratory: EPIC

We currently work with a cognitive architecture called EPIC, which stands for Executive-Process Interactive Control. A schematic of EPIC is shown on this page. EPIC enables not only procedural cognition but also motor control and perceptual-motor interactions to be treated explicitly and parsimoniously in conjunction with formal hypotheses about supervisory executive cognitive processes and task-scheduling strategies.

Given such treatment, precise computational models can be constructed to explain and predict reaction times (RTs), response accuracy, and other measurable aspects of people's overt behavior across various domains where multiple tasks must be performed concurrently. The domains to which our EPIC computational models are applicable include both elementary laboratory paradigms and complex real-world situations.

Results from such applications yield instructive lessons that should be taken into consideration during future work toward theoretical unification in studies of human performance. The transfer of data and theory from laboratory to real world may proceed more quickly by taking these lessons seriously.

More information regarding EPIC can be obtained HERE.