What's between KISS and KIDS: A Keep It Knowledgeable (KIKS) Principle for Cognitive Agent Design

The two common design principles for agent-based models, KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) and KIDS (Keep It Descriptive, Stupid) offer limited traction for developing cognitive agents, who typically have strong ties to research findings and established theories of cognition. A KIKS principle (Keep It Knowledgeable, Stupid) is proposed to capture the fact that cognitive agents are grounded in published research findings and theory, rather than simply selecting parameters in an adhoc way. In short, KIKS suggests that modelers should not focus on how many parameters, but should instead focus on choosing the right research papers and implement each of their key parameters and mechanisms. Based on this principle, a design process for creating cognitive agents based on cognitive models is proposed. This process is centered around steps that cognitive agent designers are already consider (e.g., literature search, validation, implementing a computational model). However, the KIKS process suggests two differences. First, KIKS calls for reporting explicit metadata on the empirical and theoretical relationships that an agent’s cognitive model is intended to capture. Each such relationship should be associated with a published paper that supports it. This metadata would serve a valuable purpose for comprehending, validating, and comparing the cognitive models used by different agents. Second, KIKS calls for validation tests to be specified before creating an agent’s cognitive model computationally. This process, known as test-driven design, can be used to monitor the adherence of a cognitive agent to its underlying knowledge base as it evolves through different versions. Implications, advantages, and limitations of the proposed process for KIKS are discussed.