A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about his or her own acts and their consequences. Mental models can help shape behaviour and set an approach to solving problems (akin to a personal algorithm) and doing tasks.
Read more about Mental Model: Overview, History, Mental Models and Reasoning
Famous quotes containing the words mental and/or model:
“The only inequalities that matter begin in the mind. It is not income levels but differences in mental equipment that keep people apart, breed feelings of inferiority.”
—Jacquetta Hawkes (b. 1910)
“The playing adult steps sideward into another reality; the playing child advances forward to new stages of mastery....Child’s play is the infantile form of the human ability to deal with experience by creating model situations and to master reality by experiment and planning.”
—Erik H. Erikson (20th century)