Clinical Cognitive Science: Applying Quantitative Models of Cognitive Processing to Examine Cognitive Aspects of Psychopathology

Numerous theoreti cal app roach es implicate a role for altered cogn it ive processing in th e develop ment, maintenance, and treatment of a wide range of clinically relevan t beh aviors. Clinical scient ists have been slow, however , to capitalize on the wealth of contemporary theoretical, measurement, and analytical models of cognitive processing when constructing, evalu ating, and ex tending these theoreti cal approaches to psych opathology (Mac Leod , 1993; McFall & Townsend, 1998; McFall, Treat, & Viken, 1998) . T o date, the transl at ion of cognitive science models to clinical science has occ urred primarily at th e measurement or task level, leading to an impoverish ed und erstanding and utilization of the multifacete d com plexity of the relev ant theoretical constructs, such as atte n tion, classification, memory, and learn­ ing. As a result, clinical scientists hav e tended to co llapse, or ignore the dist inc tions betwe en, th eoretical and measurement models of cognit ive