Since research on interpretation began in the sixties, one of the favourite activities of researches has been the creation of models of interpretaion, particularly of simultaneous interpretation. Some of them are widely known and mentioned in "scientific literature", as in the case of Seleskovitch's "triangular model", B. Moser's "hypothetical model", Gile's "efforts model", but there are many others. This article presents some of them for purposes of illustration, but it aims at stating and commenting on the functions these models have within the framework of research on conference interpreting (RCI) and of the teaching of interpretation, as they not always coincide with the usual fucntions of research models.