The diffusion of diffusion models in quantitative psychology: A state of the art
State of the art talk by Francis Tuerlinckx, Department of Psychology, University of Leuven, Belgium
Chair: Kohei Adachi, Tuesday 21st July, 14.30 - 15.15, Palmeston Lecture Theatre, Fisher Building.
Many psychological processes of interest are continuously subject to change and exhibit a great deal of randomness. Our attention increases and decreases again, our moods swing, and our self-esteem fluctuates. A particular class of stochastic processes, called diffusion models, can be applied to describe and analyze phenomena characterized by continuous change and randomness. The simplest kind of diffusion models can be seen as a generalization of the more well-known random walk.
In this talk, I will briefly discuss the origins of diffusion models as they arose in physics and finance and highlight how developments in mathematics and statistics have provided firmer foundation. Furthermore, I will give an overview of the application of diffusion models in two domains of quantitative psychology: Response time modeling and the analysis of intensive longitudinal data.