Mental model
A mental model is the representation of an object or a process in the consciousness of a living being. Since the information available in the world is already massively filtered and changed by the sensory organs and also by the brain, a mental model is always only an excerpt, a "reduced" image of a part of reality . Nevertheless, with “good” mental models, the relevant aspects of reality are retained, in particular their structure, in which case homomorphisms are involved .
Concept development
Ludwig Wittgenstein describes this idea in section 2.1 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1918): “We make images of the facts. The picture is a model of reality. The objects in the picture correspond to the elements of the picture. ”In 1927 the book Le dessin enfantin by Georges-Henri Luquet was published in which he analyzed how children represent the world in their pictures. These very often contain “explanations” of the world, such as B. cause-effect relationships. From this it can be concluded that children link their perceptions internally and arrange them in an internal model that makes sense for them. Jean Piaget describes Luquet's book as an important inspiration for his theory of mental logic (1958). Kenneth Craik is considered to be the inventor of the term mental model , who discussed the term in detail in his book The Nature of Explanation in 1943 .
Psychological point of view
Mental models are “subjective functional models for technical, physical and social processes as well as complex conditions (e.g. syllogistic conclusions)”. Since we get to know the entities of the world serially , i.e. in small individual steps and these one after the other, the perceived details must first be put together by the brain into wholes . The resulting mental models have a reduced complexity compared to reality , whereby the components of the world can be processed by working memory - with its very limited capacity. The complexity reduction is done, according to Philip Johnson-Laird and Dedre Gentner , in three ways:
- quantitative relationships are reduced to qualitative ones
- the “samples” under consideration are reduced in size
- By forming analogies , familiar facts are used.
In the case of living beings capable of learning , some of the perceptions remain in the memory - at least the "important" ones that serve to survive. With sufficient intelligence , patterns can be recognized in these experiences and rules can be derived from them. Over time, this creates mental representations of the individually relevant sections of the world.
The perception varies due to the individual memory contents, moods and thought processes of the perceiver, which are used to build the mental model - the result is that every being has its own perception. These models are required in order to be able to classify information that is to be newly recorded in a context and thus to understand and evaluate it. With the new recording of information and impressions, the possibilities for mapping reality in a mental model for future perceptions are constantly expanded, so there is a learning effect .
Not only are the components of the mental model different for each person, but also their weighting . While some people think more figuratively , others orientate themselves more towards other sensory impressions and experiences, such as pain or happiness.
See also
literature
- Stephan Dutke: Mental Models: Constructs of Knowledge and Understanding. Cognitive psychological basics for software ergonomics , Verlag Angewandte Psychologie 1993, ISBN 3-87844-111-8
- Karlheinz Jakob : machine, mental model, metaphor. Studies on the semantics and history of technical language , Niemeyer, Tübingen 1991, ISBN 3-484-31123-1
- Philip Johnson-Laird : Mental Models , Harvard University Press, Reprint 1983, ISBN 0-674-56882-6 (English)
- Thorsten Rasch: Understanding abstract facts: Semantic shapes in the construction of mental models , Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Berlin 2006, ISBN 3-86573-217-8
- Norbert M. Seel: Weltwissen und mental models , Hogrefe-Verlag 1991, ISBN 3-8017-0489-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Friedrich Dorsch: Dorsch Psychological Dictionary , Verlag Hans Huber, 1994.