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Overt cognitive behavior arises through a complex interaction between internal, not directly observable, cognitive mechanisms. As there may be several ways of achieving the same overt behavior, it is intrinsically difficult to find the" correct" model. One way to proceed however is to uncover the causal dependencies between a particular configuration of cognitive mechanisms and simulated overt behavior. This can be achieved in controlled simulation experiments where every combination of potentially important cognitive mechanisms is systematically tried out. To illustrate this point, we briefly describe an application of the two-level factorial simulation design on a modeling project in mental imagery. We conclude by discussing the potential of the method as a tool for reliable incremental model development.