Mental Models II

"’Mental models’ are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior. […] Mental models focus on the openness needed to unearth shortcomings in our present ways of seeing the world. [...] Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior.” (Peter Senge, “The Fifth Discipline”, 1990)

“A mental model is a knowledge structure that incorporates both declarative knowledge (e.g., device models) and procedural knowledge (e.g., procedures for determining distributions of voltages within a circuit), and a control structure that determines how the procedural and declarative knowledge are used in solving problems (e.g., mentally simulating the behavior of a circuit).” (Barbara Y White & John R Frederiksen, “Causal Model Progressions as a Foundation for Intelligent Learning Environments”, Artificial Intelligence 42, 1990)

"We all depend on models to interpret our everyday experiences. We interpret what we see in terms of mental models constructed on past experience and education. They are constructs that we use to understand the pattern of our experiences." (David Bartholomew, “What is Statistics?”, 1995)

“I do not know that my view is more correct; I do not even think that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are good categories for assessing complex mental models of external reality - for models in science are judged [as] useful or detrimental, not as true or false.” (Stephen Jay Gould, “Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History”, 1995)

“The term mental model refers to knowledge structures utilized in the solving of problems. Mental models are causal and thus may be functionally defined in the sense that they allow a problem solver to engage in description, explanation, and prediction. Mental models may also be defined in a structural sense as consisting of objects, states that those objects exist in, and processes that are responsible for those objects’ changing states.” (Robert Hafner & Jim Stewart, “Revising Explanatory Models to Accommodate Anomalous Genetic Phenomena: Problem Solving in the ‘Context of Discovery’”, Science Education 79 (2), 1995)

“Our mental model of the way the world works must shift from images of a clockwork, machinelike universe that is fixed and determined, to the model of a universe that is open, dynamic, interconnected, and full of living qualities.” (Joseph Jaworski, “Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership”, 1996)

“Science begins with the world we have to live in, accepting its data and trying to explain its laws. From there, it moves toward the imagination: it becomes a mental construct, a model of a possible way of interpreting experience. The further it goes in this direction, the more it tends to speak the language of mathematics, which is really one of the languages of the imagination, along with literature and music.” (Northrop Frye, “The Educated Imagination”, 2002)

“Each generation builds a mental picture that reflects their own understanding of this world. They construct mental tools that penetrate more and more deeply into it, so that they can explore aspects of it that were previously hidden.” (Alain Connes, “The Princeton Companion to Mathematics”, Ed. by Timothy Gowers et al, 2008)

"When a particular image appears in the mind's eye often enough it begins to connect apparently unrelated ideas leading to models and theories. […] Patterns experienced again and again become intuitions. […] Intuitive judgments are made by our use of imagery; intuition is the result of mental model building. […] The mental model used and the form of the intuition is dependent upon the question being answered." (Roger Frantz, “Two Minds”, 2005)

“We all have mental models: the lens through which we see the world that drive our responses to everything we experience. Being aware of your mental models is key to being objective.” (Elizabeth Thornton, “Learn to Be an Objective Leader without Losing Everything”, 2015)

See also:
Mental Models I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII