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 vast results obtained by Science are won by no mystical faculties, by no mental processes other than those which are practiced by every one of us, in the humblest and meanest affairs of life. A detective policeman discovers a burglar from the marks made by his shoe, by a mental process identical with that by which Cuvier restored the extinct animals of Montmartre from fragments of their bones.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)
“When Titian was mixing brown madder,
His model was posed up a ladder.
Said Titian, “That position
Calls for coition,”
So he lept up the ladder and had her.”
—Anonymous.