Experiments on a lattice theory of operator mental models

Human reasoning involving quantified statements is one area in which findings from cognitive psychology and linguistic pragmatics complement each other. I will show how mental models theory provides a promising account of the mechanisms underlying peoples’ performance in three types of reasoning tasks involving quantified premises and conclusions. I will further suggest that relevance theory can help to explain the way in which mental models are employed in the reasoning processes. Conversely, mental models theory suggests that human reasoning typically does not involve deductive rules, which in turn entails a modification to the nature of the deductive processes proposed by relevance theory. The mechanism proposed by mental models theory also helps to clarify the nature of the relevance theory distinction between conceptual and procedural information.

With the swift entry of artificial intelligence (AI) into everyday life, human-product interactions are becoming increasingly complex. We suggest an ecosystem-minded, humanity-centered design approach to better understand this complexity. Simultaneously with the development of interaction types, discussions and developments on theories of mental models are crucial to understanding and improving the nature of these interactions. In this paper, we address the gap in mental model theories and extend Norman's conceptual model at three dialogue levels: dialogue in language, mind, and use.

Our knowledge of Thales of Miletus is fragmentary. We only have very short passages attributed to him by ancient sources, and those passages are not always clearly consistent with each other. In this paper, I analyze some of the most representative ancient fragments with theses assigned to Thales of Miletus by means of a methodology based on the general framework of the unified theory of mental models. My intention in doing that is to try to clarify what he truly thought about water, the soul, and gods, and my conclusions refer to the fact that it is very possible that Thales’ philosophy was much closer to myth than sometimes assumed.

Mental model theory as a model for analysing visual and multimodal discourse

This chapter discusses how a substantial number of studies have shown that working memory capacity (WMC) is the best single predictor identified so far of reasoning ability as measured by intelligence tests. This finding is an important step toward understanding psychometric intelligence in terms of theories from cognitive psychology. The factor-analytic approach to individual differences provides a tool to identify associations and dissociations between indicators of cognitive functions. The approach is to model the correlational structure of a large set of indicators by theoretically specified structural equation models. WMC is found to be related to measures of processing speed. One explanation is that many working memory tasks are complex span tasks that involve a processing component, and the speed of performing this component is one source of variance in complex span tasks. Currently the most successful theory of deductive reasoning is the theory of mental models.

When solving a simple probabilistic problem, people tend to build an incomplete mental representation. We observe this pattern in responses to probabilistic problems over a set of premises using the conjunction, disjunction, and conditional propositional connectives. The mental model theory of extensional reasoning explains this bias towards underestimating the number of possibilities: In reckoning with different interpretations of the premises (logical rules, mental model theoretical, and, specific to conditional premises, conjunction and biconditional interpretation) the mental model theory accounts for the majority of observations. Different interpretations of a premise result in a build-up of mental models that are often incomplete. These mental models are processed using either an extensional strategy relying on proportions amongst models, or a conflict monitoring strategy. The consequence of considering too few possibilities is an erroneous probability estimate akin to that faced by decision makers who fail to generate and consider all alternatives, a characteristic of bounded rationality. We compare our results to the results published by Johnson-Laird, Legrenzi, Girotto, Legrenzi, and Caverni [Johnson-Laird, P., Legrenzi, P., Girotto, V., Legrenzi, M., & Caverni, J. (1999). Naive probability: A mental model theory of extensional reasoning. Psychological Review, 106, 62-88. doi: 10. 1037/0033-295X.106.1.62], and we observe lower performance levels than those in the original article.

This study is situated within the scope of critical analysis. It examines Moroccan citizens’ cognitive reception of political discourse through a linguistic and socio-cognitive perspective. Focusing on three major political parties representing the country’s principal ideological poles—the CU, PJD, and SUPF—the research investigates how citizens interpret political messages and the cognitive mechanisms underlying their perceptions. Guided by Van Dijk’s (2008) mental model theory, the study explores how participants construct understanding based on personal experiences, cultural knowledge, and socially shared representations. The Data collected via a cognitively structured questionnaire reveal that participants frequently rely on pre-existing mental models shaped by negative episodic memories, social images, and culturally ingrained perceptions. These cognitive patterns result in a persistent misalignment between politicians’ intended discourse and the public’s interpretations. The findings also indicate that participants judge political discourse more by the parties’ perceived social roles than by their actual ideologies, which contributes to fixed perceptions and widespread political disengagement among the Moroccan public. Accordingly, the study highlights the importance of political literacy as a mechanism to align citizens’ mental models with parties’ cognitive frameworks, thereby fostering a more coherent social understanding of Moroccan political messaging.

The theory of probabilistic mental models (PMM; G. Gigerenzer, U. Hoffrage, & H. Kleinbölting, 1991) has had a major influence on the field of judgment and decision making, with the most recent important modifications to PMM theory being the identification of several fast and frugal heuristics (G. Gigerenzer & D. G. Goldstein, 1996). These heuristics were purported to provide psychologically plausible cognitive process models that describe a variety of judgment behavior. In this article, the authors evaluate the psychological plausibility of the assumptions upon which PMM were built and, consequently, the psychological plausibility of several of the fast and frugal heuristics. The authors argue that many of PMM theory's assumptions are questionable, given available data, and that fast and frugal heuristics are, in fact, psychologically implausible.

Rudolf Carnap proposed three reduction rules to improve scientific language. Those rules indicate when it is correct to add a property in situations in which other properties are already had. Assuming the theory of mental models, it has been shown that the rules are not hard to use from the cognitive point of view. The key to argue that is to accept that the human mind works as dual-process theories claim. According to these theories, people can use two different systems. One of them implies effort but the other one does not. Thus, the idea is that Carnap’s reduction rules can be applied resorting just to the system not implying cognitive effort. This paper goes one step further and poses that even from a Popperian perspective the reduction rules keep not being difficult. One might think that falsifiability requires cognitive effort because it needs to address situations in which the sentences are false. However, this paper tries to explain that, following the theory of mental models, that is not hard if the sentences are conditionals, and the sentences in the reduction rules have conditional structures.

This chapter gives an overview of our ongoing experimental research in the MeMoSpace project, concerning the cognitive processes underlying human spatial reasoning. Our theoretical background is mental model theory, which conceives reasoning as a process in which mental models of the given information are constructed and inspected to solve a reasoning task. We first report some findings of our previous work and then two new experiments on spatial relational inference, which were conducted to investigate well-known effects from relational and syllogistic reasoning. (1) Continuity effect: n-term-series problems with continuous (W r1 X, X r2 Y, Y r3 Z) and semi-continuous (X r2 Y, Y r3 Z, W r1 X) premise order are easier than tasks with discontinuous order (Y r3 Z, W r1 X, X r2 Y). (2) Figural the order of terms in the premises (X r Y, Y r Z or Y r X, Z r Y) effects the order of terms in the conclusion (X r Z or Z r X). In the first experiment subjects made more errors and took more time to process the premises when in discontinuous order. In the second experiment subjects showed the general preference for the term order Z r X in the generated conclusions, modulated by a figural bias: subjects used X r Z more often if the premise term order was X r Y, Y r Z, whereas Z r X was used most often for the premise term order Y r X, Z r Y. Results are discussed in the framework of mental model theory with special reference to computational models of spatial reasoning.

Cognitive views of creativity: Creative teaching for creative learning

The aim of this research is to develop a checklist of questions that can be used in the analysis of institutional functioning or problems by relating each framework in the four-framework model developed by Bolman and Deal with different theories. Graduate education institutions were selected as the unit of analysis and the questions were developed taking into account the functioning and problems in the institutions. The method of document analysis was used in the research based on qualitative research. Graduate theses in Google Scholar and YÖK thesis database, articles, papers and books published in refereed journals and indexed in international and national indexes were used as data sources. In selecting the theories, the overlap between the content of the Four Frame Model and the assumptions of the theories was taken into account. The selected theories are limited to the accessed theories and the consensus among the researchers regarding the content of the Four Fram Model and the overlap of the assumptions of these theories. In the process of data collection and analysis, an algorithm was created by the researchers and description, sampling and association were used in the analysis. According to the results of the research, a checklist of questions was developed, taking into account that the structural frame dimension of the model can be used with Bureaucracy Theory and Organisational Ecology Theory; the human resource frame dimension with Motivation Theory and Mental Models Theory; the political framework with Organisational Cohesion Theory and Actor Network Theory; and the symbolic frame with Symbolic Interaction Theory. In a further study, the checklist can be extended with different theories, the functionality of the question checklist can be tested with experimental studies, and software for theory-oriented decision support systems can be developed. Keywords: Four-Frame Model Theory based analysis, postgraduate education,

Basing predictions on the concepts of a mental model and social representation, we use a network diagram technique, which is a graphical extension and a statistical development of Lunt's matrix method (Lunt, 1989, 1991), to elicit individual models of the causal factors affecting a person's prospects of unemployment (Expt 1) or employment (Expt 2). Such diagrams comprise both direct paths from a factor to the phenomenon and indirect paths in which the connection to it is via some other factor. As we expected, the representation of unemployment is politicized in a way the representation of employment is not. In both studies, individuals also rated the effectiveness of different actions, based on the diagrammed factors, to affect the target phenomenon. These ratings were best explained by the perceived strength of factor paths rather than simply by the number of paths emanating from that factor. Experiment 2 also showed that the relative importance of direct path strengths in predicting these ratings depended on the order of completing the diagram and rating tasks consistent with expectations derived from the theory of mental models. Finally, using factor analysis and item response theory we show that individual diagrams for employment can be conceptualized as deriving from a single consensual representation. We discuss a view of social representation consistent with these data.

Age differences in syllogistic reasoning in relation to crystallized and fluid ability were studied in 278 adults from 19 to 96 years of age. Two reasoning tasks, the evaluation and the construction of conclusions for syllogisms of varying complexity and believability, a vocabulary test, and 3 tasks of working memory were administered. The magnitude of age-related variance on selected reasoning tasks was only partially reduced by statistically controlling measures of both working memory and vocabulary. Additional age-related effects on reasoning were found to be significantly associated with number of mental models and bias produced by conflict between belief and logic. A significant bias was also found toward acceptance of invalid syllogisms as valid, even when contents were abstract. These sources of error in logic are discussed in relation to Johnson-Laird's (1983) theory of mental models and Evan's (1989) account of bias in human reasoning.

BackgroundWritten assessments fall into two classes: constructed-response or open-ended questions, such as the essay and a number of variants of the short-answer question, and selected-response or closed-ended questions; typically in the form of multiple-choice. It is widely believed that constructed response written questions test higher order cognitive processes in a manner that multiple-choice questions cannot, and consequently have higher validity.DiscussionAn extensive review of the literature suggests that in summative assessment neither premise is evidence-based. Well-structured open-ended and multiple-choice questions appear equivalent in their ability to assess higher cognitive functions, and performance in multiple-choice assessments may correlate more highly than the open-ended format with competence demonstrated in clinical practice following graduation. Studies of construct validity suggest that both formats measure essentially the same dimension, at least in mathematics, the physical sciences, biology and medicine. The persistence of the open-ended format in summative assessment may be due to the intuitive appeal of the belief that synthesising an answer to an open-ended question must be both more cognitively taxing and similar to actual experience than is selecting a correct response. I suggest that cognitive-constructivist learning theory would predict that a well-constructed context-rich multiple-choice item represents a complex problem-solving exercise which activates a sequence of cognitive processes which closely parallel those required in clinical practice, hence explaining the high validity of the multiple-choice format.SummaryThe evidence does not support the proposition that the open-ended assessment format is superior to the multiple-choice format, at least in exit-level summative assessment, in terms of either its ability to test higher-order cognitive functioning or its validity. This is explicable using a theory of mental models, which might predict that the multiple-choice format will have higher validity, a statement for which some empiric support exists. Given the superior reliability and cost-effectiveness of the multiple-choice format consideration should be given to phasing out open-ended format questions in summative assessment. Whether the same applies to non-exit-level assessment and formative assessment is a question which remains to be answered; particularly in terms of the educational effect of testing, an area which deserves intensive study.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-014-0249-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.