A representation of a problem space that is held inside the head of the problem solver. A good mental model forms an analogue of the real world representation of the problem. In other words, this model should have the same functional nature and structure as the system it models. See [ Johnson-Laird83] and [ Ormerod90].
a mental representation that people use to organize their experience about themselves, others, the environment, and the things with which they interact; its functional role is to provide predictive and explanatory power for understanding these phenomena
an internal representation employed to encode, predict, and evaluate the consequences of perceived and intended changes to the operator s current state within the dynamic environment
a "psychological representation of the environment and its expected behavior
a representation of a situation and contains elements that represent people, things, events, states, processes, times and places, and real world relations between them
a representation of some part of the environment
a representation of your thoughts about reality
A concrete mental representation of a problem situation that may be useful in solving the problem. See also mental representation.
A mental model is an explanation in someone's thought process for how something works in the real world. It is a kind of internal symbol or representation of external reality, hypothesised to play a major part in cognition. The idea is believed to have been originated by Kenneth Craik in his 1943 book The Nature of Explanation.