mental model

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English

Etymology

Introduced by Scottish philosopher Kenneth Craik in The Nature of Explanation (1943).

Noun

mental model (plural mental models)

  1. Someone's understanding of how a system works.
    • 2007 December 31, Megan McArdle, “Mental models of immigration”, in The Atlantic‎:
      My mental model, however, extends over multiple time periods. In time period one, you import a large number of guest workers who impose adjustment costs on their neighbors, including other immigrants with whom they compete for resources.
    • 2008 January 24, Steven Mithen, “When We Were Nicer”, in London Review of Books‎, volume 30, number 02, →ISSN:
      […] who argue that we still have biologically fixed Stone Age minds constituted by mental models evolved to solve problems of Pleistocene environments, principally those of the African savanna of three million years ago.
    • 2011 March 18, James Fallows, “Digital Introspection and the Importance of Self-Knowledge”, in The Atlantic‎:
      We are the aggregation of how all our thoughts, feelings and experiences connect. This gestalt forms a perspective of the world as we see it. It's kind of like a miniature version of the world in our heads—a “mental model” if you will.
    • 2020, Donald L. Fisher, William J. Horrey, John D. Lee, Michael A. Regan, editors, Handbook of Human Factors for Automated, Connected, and Intelligent Vehicles‎, CRC Press, →ISBN:
      Prior to the use of an automated system, a driver's initial mental model is constructed based on a variety of information sources, which may include a vehicle owner's manual, perceptions of other related technologies, word-of-mouth, marketing information, etc.

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