Abstract
There is a well-known fable about six learned blind men and an elephant. In this fable, each blind man encounters the elephant from a different perspective and develops his own opinion as to the nature of this beast: One grabs his ear and thinks it is a fan, another feels his tail and believes it to be a rope, and so on. The fable concludes with each blind man steadfastly holding his own narrow opinion. Among the many metaphorical elephants in cognitive science, one that stands out is the concept mental model. In this paper we examine this elephant by exploring the multiplicity of claims made about mental models. We do not pretend to be any less blind than other researchers who have tackled these problems, nor do we claim to have the only answers to many of the questions we raise. What we hope is that by taking a fresh look at mental models research we can provide some unification of concepts and point to promising methodologies and applications. We hope that by examining the issues surrounding mental models we raise the awareness of those who would try to use mental models in construction of knowledge-based systems (see Davis, 1982).
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Anderson, J. R. (1987). Skill acquisition: Compilation of weak-method problem solutions. Psychological Review, 94, 192–210.
Ashby, W. R. (1956). Introduction to cybernetics. London: Chapman and Hall.
Bainbridge, L. (1979). Verbal reports as evidence of the process operator’s knowledge. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies,11,411–436.
Bainbridge, L. (1981). Mathematical equations or processing routines. In J. Rasmussen & W. B. Rouse (Eds.), Human detection and diagnosis of system failures (pp. 259–286). New York: Plenum.
Bainbridge, L. (1986). Asking questions and accessing knowledge. Future Computing Systems, 1, 143–149.
Barnett, B. (1989). Information processing components and structural knowledge representations in pilots’ judgments. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL.
Bower, G. H., Clark, M. C., Lesgold, A. M., & Winzenz, D. (1969). Hierarchical retrieval schemes in recall of categorized word lists. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 323–343.
Brown, J. S., & de Kleer, J. (1981). Mental models of physical mechanisms and their acquisition. In J. R. Anderson (Ed.), Cognitive skills and their acquisition (pp. 285–308). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Carroll, J. M., & Olson, J. R. (1988). Mental models in human-computer interaction. In M. Helander (Ed.), Handbook of human-computer interaction (pp. 45–66). New York: North-Holland.
Carroll, J. M., & Thomas, J. C. (1982). Metaphor and the cognitive representation of computing systems. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 12, 107–116.
Clement, J. (1988). Observed methods for generating analogies in scientific problem solving. Cognitive Science, 12, 563–586.
Collins, A., & Gentner, D. (1986). How people construct mental models. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural models in language and thought (pp. 243–265). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Conant, R. C., & Ashby, W. R. (1970). Every good regulator of a system must be a model of that system. International Journal of Systems Science, 1, 89–97.
Cooke, N. M., & Schvaneveldt, R. (1988). Effects of computer programming experience on network representations of abstract programming concepts. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 29, 407–427.
Curry, R. E. (1981). A model of human fault detection for computer dynamic processes. In J. Rasmussen & W. B. Rouse (Eds.), Human detection and diagnosis of system failures (pp. 171–183). New York: Plenum.
Davis, R. E. (1982). Expert systems: Where are we? And where do we go from here? (AI Memo #665) Cambridge, MA: MIT AI Lab.
de Kleer, J., & Brown, J. S. (1983). Assumptions and ambiguities in mechanistic mental models. In D. Gentner & A. Stevens (Eds.), Mental models (pp. 155–190). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over machine. New York: Macmillan.
Engelbeck, G. (1989). The acquisition and retention of a cognitive skill. Unpublished doctoral clissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder, Boulder, CO.
Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1984). Protocol analysis: Verbal reports as data. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Forbus, K., & Gentner, D. (1986). Learning physical domains: Towards a theoretical framework. In R. M. Michalski, J. Carbonell, & T. Mitchell (Eds.), Machine learning: An artificial intelligence approach (Vol. 3, pp. 311–348). Los Altos, CA: Morgan Kaufmann.
Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy. Cognitive Science, 10, 157–170.
Gentner, D. (1989). The mechanisms of analogical learning. In S. Vosniadou & A. Ortony (Eds.) Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 199–241). London: Cambridge University Press.
Gentner, D., & Gentner, D. R. (1983). Flowing waters or teeming crowds: Mental models of electricity. In D. Gentner & A. Stevens (Eds.), Mental models (pp. 99–129). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Gentner, D., & Landers, R. (1985, November). Analogical reminding: A good match is hard to find. Proceedings of the International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (pp. 607–613).
Gentner, D., & Toupin, C. (1986). Systematicity and surface similarity in the development of analogy. Cognitive Science, 10, 277–300.
Halasz, F., & Moran, T. P. (1982). Analogy considered harmful. Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings. Washington, DC: National Bureau of Standards.
Halasz, F., & Moran, T. P. (1983). Mental models and problem solving in using a calculator. Proceedings of the CHI ‘83 Conference on Human Factors in Computer Systems (pp. 212–216).
Hanisch, K., Kramer, A. F., Huhn, C., & Schumacher, R. (1988). Novice-expert differences in the cognitive representation of system features: Mental models and verbalizable knowledge. Proceedings of the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Human Factors Society (pp. 219–223).
Hinsley, D. A., Hayes, J. R., & Simon, H. A. (1977). From words to equations: Meaning and representation in algebra and word problems. In M. A. Just & P. A. Carpenter (Eds.), Cognitive processes in comprehension (pp. 62–68). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Hintzman, D. (1986). “Schema abstraction” in a multiple-trace memory model. Psychological Review, 93, 411–428.
Hoffman, R. R. (1987). The problem of extracting the knowledge of experts from the perspective of experimental psychology. AI Magazine, 8, 53–67.
Hoffman, R. R., Cochran, E. L., & Nead, J. M. (1989). Cognitive metaphors in experimental psychology. In D. Leary (Ed.), Metaphors in the history of psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hoffman, R. R., & Nead, J. M. (1983). General contextualism, ecological science, and cognitive research. The Journal of Mind and Behavior, 4, 507–561.
Holland, J., Holyoak, K. J., Nisbett, R. E., & Thagard, P. (1986). Induction: Processes of inference learning, and discovery. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jagacinski, R. J., & Miller, R. A. (1978). Describing the human operator’s internal model of a dynamic system. Human Factors, 20, 425–433.
Kempton, W. (1986). Two theories of home heat control. Cognitive Science, 10, 75–90.
Kessel, C. J., & Wickens, C. D. (1982). The transfer of failure-detection skills between monitoring and controlling dynamic systems. Human Factors, 24, 49–60.
Kieras, D. E., & Bovair, S. (1984). The role of a mental model in learning to operate a device. Cognitive Science, 8, 255–274.
Kieras, D. E., & Polson, P. G. (1985). An approach to the formal analysis of user complexity. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies,22, 365–394.
Macauley, D. (1988). The way things work. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin
Mayer, R. E. (1976). Some conditions of meaningful learning for computer programming: Advance organizers and subject control of frame order. Journal of Educational Psychology, 67, 725–734.
Mayer, R. E., & Bayman, P. (1981). Psychology of calculator languages: A framework for describing differences in users’ knowledge. Communications of the ACM, 24, 511–520.
McCloskey, M. (1983). Naive theories of motion. In D. Gentner & A. Stevens (Eds.), Mental models (pp. 299–324). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Medin, D., & Ortony, A. (1989). Psychological essentialism. In S. Vosniadou & A. Ortony (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 179–196). London: Cambridge University Press.
Medin, D., & Schaffer, M. (1978). A context theory of classification learning. Psychological Review, 85, 207–238.
Moray, N. (1986). Intelligent decision aids, mental models and the theory of machines. In E. Hollnagel, G. Mancini, & D. D. Woods (Eds.), Intelligent decision support in process environments (pp. 273–291). New York: Springer-Verlag.
Moray, N. (1988). A lattice theory of mental models of complex systems (Report No. EPRL-88–08). Engineering Psychology Research Laboratory, University of Illinois.
Moray, N., & Reeves, T. (1987). Hunting the homomorph: A theory of mental models and a method by which they may be identified. Proceedings of the International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (pp. 594–597).
Nisbett, R. E., & Wilson, T. D. (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological review, 84, 231–259.
Norman, D. A. (1983). Some observations on mental models. In D. Gentner & A. Stevens (Eds.), Mental models (pp. 7–14). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Norman, D. A. (1986). Cognitive engineering. In D. Norman & S. Draper (Eds.), User-centered system design: New perspectives on human-computer interaction (pp. 31–61). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Norman, D. A. (1988). The psychology of everyday things. New York: Basic Books.
Nosofsky, R. (1985). Choice, similarity, and the context theory of classification. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 10, 104–114.
Raajmakers, J. G. W., & Shiffrin, R. M. (1981). Search of Associative Memory. Psychological Review, 88, 93–134.
Rasmussen, J. (1986). Human information processing in man-machine systems. New York: North-Holland.
Ross, B. (1984). Remindings and their effects in learning a cognitive skill. Cognitive Psychology, 16, 371–416.
Rouse, W. B., & Morris, N. M. (1986). On looking into the black box: Prospects and limits in the search for mental models. Psychological Bulletin, 100, 349–363.
Rumelhart, D. E., & Norman, D. A. (1981). Analogical processes in learning. In J. R. Anderson (Ed.), Cognitive skills and their acquisition (pp. 335–359). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Rumelhart, D. E., & Ortony, A. (1977). The representation of knowledge in memory. In R. C. Anderson, R. J. Spiro, & W. E. Montague (Eds.), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge (pp. 99–135). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Schumacher, R. M. (1987). Acquisition of mental models. In J. Flach (Ed.), Proceedings of the Fourth Annual Mid-Central Human Factors! Ergonomics Conference (pp. 142–148). New York: Spring-Verlag.
Schumacher, R. M. (1989). Factors affecting access to analogical similarity. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL.
Schumacher, R. M., & Gentner, D. (1988). Transfer of training as processing routines. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics, 18, 592–600.
Schvaneveldt, R., Durso, F., Goldsmith, T., Breen, T., Cooke, N., Tucker, R., & DeMaio, J. (1985). Measuring the structure of expertise. International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, 23, 699–728.
Tversky, A. (1977). Features of similarity. Psychological Review, 84, 327–352.
Tversky, A., & Gati, I. (1982). Separability, similarity and the triangle inequality. Psychological Review,89,123–154.
Veldehuyzen, W., & Stassen, H. G. (1977). The internal model concept: An application to modeling human control of large ships. Human Factors, 19, 367–380.
Wickens, C. D. (1984). Engineering psychology and human performance. Columbus, OH: Charles Merrill.
Wickens, C. D., & Kessel, C. (1979). The effects of participatory mode and task workload on the detection of dynamic system failures. IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics, 13, 24–31.
Wickens, C. D., & Kessel, C. (1980). Processing resource demands of failure detection in dynamic systems. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 6, 564–577.
Wickens, C. D., & Kessel, C. (1981). Failure detection in dynamic systems. In J. Rasmussen & W. B. Rouse (Eds.), Human detection and diagnosis of system failures (pp. 155–169). New York: Plenum.
Williams, M. D., Hollan, S. D., & Stevens, A. (1983). Human reasoning about a simple physical system. In D. Gentner & A. Stevens (Eds.), Mental models (pp. 131–154). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Young, R. M. (1983). Surrogates and mappings: Two kinds of conceptual models for interactive devices. In D. Gentner & A. Stevens (Eds.), Mental models (pp. 35–52). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1992 Springer-Verlag New York, Inc.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Schumacher, R.M., Czerwinski, M.P. (1992). Mental Models and the Acquisition of Expert Knowledge. In: Hoffman, R.R. (eds) The Psychology of Expertise. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9733-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4613-9733-5_4
Publisher Name: Springer, New York, NY
Print ISBN: 978-1-4613-9735-9
Online ISBN: 978-1-4613-9733-5
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive