What are mental models?
How Mental Models Develop
Mental models can be based on beliefs as well as experiences. They are continually updated as people gain more experience, receive feedback, or encounter situations that contradict their expectations. They can form from any of the following:
- direct interaction with a situation you’ve encountered
- through observation of how something works, or
- through indirect experience (reading about a system, making inferences, or listening to others).
Once constructed, we retrieve a mental model from memory and apply it to a new situation through analogical thinking. Analogies are mappings from one mental representation to another (Halford, 2014). When encountering a problem, a mental model will influence what a person pays attention to and the actions and strategies they use to solve a problem. This is one reason experts can often solve problems quickly.
Characteristics of Mental Models
They are incomplete. Mental models are often incomplete and approximate. They are subject to inaccuracies and lack of detail. For example, if you have no medical background, your mental model of how the heart pumps blood is most likely incomplete. As you read an article on exercise and the heart, your mental model of the heart system will integrate a few more details. But it will still not be complete or accurate.
They are unstable. According to Jakob Nielsen, mental models are in flux and unstable. They may be mixed up with other mental models. For example, if you’ve used two different devices for the same task, such as two different tablets, you might combine the mental models. This mixed-up version may help you complete a task, but the model won’t be a perfect match for the system.
Why Mental Models Matter for Learning Design
Discovering Learner’s Mental Models
Some mental models are difficult for people to describe, so you have to infer them through interviews, observation, think-aloud protocols, simple diagrams, and performance data. If you want to compare mental models across groups of learners, you can document or diagram the models and compare them. This may reveal misconceptions and gaps in knowledge in a way that performance support can address.
Conceptual Models Versus Mental Models
In the world of product and user interface design, the designer’s conceptual model is the product or interface that the designer presents to the user. In learning design, the conceptual model might work like this.
A learning designer creates an interactive diagram to teach technicians how a hydraulic lift works. The diagram presents the designer’s conceptual model of the system, showing how the components interact with pressure and fluid. While learning, users bring their own mental models of hydraulics, which may be inaccurate or incomplete. If the diagram aligns with learners’ existing mental models, they are likely to find the it intuitive.
On the other hand, if the interactive diagram differs substantially from the user’s mental model, they may need additional explanation before the diagram makes sense. Thus, designers need to consider users’ mental models. A mismatch can cause frustration and confusion, which detract from the learning experience.
Filling in the Gaps
Mental models are important to consider when selecting instructional strategies. Suppose you were to write instructions for a new procedure that differs from anything the audience has encountered before. For example, employees at a manufacturing plant have always punched a time clock to track their work hours. Over time, they developed a mental model of how the process works.
Now the company is asking people to track their time using a mobile app. Employees will need to construct a new mental model for recording their time. By understanding their mental model of the previous system and how they think mobile apps work, you can design instruction or support that builds on their current knowledge rather than requiring learners to start from scratch.
Conclusion
Examining and understanding your audience’s mental models is another way to improve instruction. For more on mental models from a user experience perspective, see Mental Models.
References:
- Faranello, Scott. Practical UX Design. Packt Publishing, 2016.
- Halford, Graeme S.. Children’s Understanding: The Development of Mental Models, Taylor & Francis Group, 2014.
- Hall, Erika. Just Enough Research, A Book Apart, May 16, 2014.
- Johnson-Laird, P.N. Mental Models. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983.
- Neilson, Jacob. Mental Models, 2010. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/mental-models/.
- Rouse, William B. Modeling and Visualization of Complex Systems and Enterprises: Explorations of Physical, Human, Economic, and Social Phenomena. John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
Thanks for this article Connie! One way I support filling in gaps in mental models is with metaphors. I often begin an instructional design project with a curriculum-wide metaphor. It helps me organize my design and if I build it into the curriculum, it supports learners’ understanding of the relationship of parts to whole. Often learners pick this up and make it their own, building out the metaphor. In edits, I build in their ideas. The most powerful example of this is the journey metaphor for the Parenting Inside Out curriculum I designed for criminal justice involved parents. This metaphor relates the components of parenting to taking a road trip. This supports, enriches and builds out the parents’ mental model of parenting. The initial metaphor had Destination Adulthood, the Backbone Parenting Highway, guardrails for child guidance practices, road signs, cars as kids, and gas station attendants as parents. The parents themselves (often incarcerated) added detours and potholes to represent the challenges they were encounter due to prison or substance use. We tell the story of parenting on the first day of class with parents putting up the pieces to the metaphor on the wall as they share about their kids, hopes and dreams. Then the metaphor lives on the classroom wall and acts as a graphic organizer for the length of the course. Parents pick up the language of the metaphor and use it when they speak with family court judges and parole officers, noting the “guardrails” they used in their parent-child visits, how they were making best use of their “detour”, and what “roadsigns” they were creating to guide their kids towards the hopes and dreams they held for their kids at “Destination Adulthood”.
Wow. Thanks for sharing the details, Tracy.
Any thoughts on how to teach people useful mental models so they can perform their job(s) better, Connie?
Hi Jeff,
I thought I covered that in this article, LOL, but I guess not. Yes. I think visualizations are very good to show the way things operate: all kinds of diagrams and illustrations. If the mental models are complex, I’d consider a series of scaffolding activities that take place over time. Also, it might be effective to have people practice using their mental model via scenario-based activities that get increasingly more complex. I think one of the best opportunities for identifying misconceptions is if you can find a way to discover the common inaccuracies in their mental models and then fix those through instruction. People can also benefit from working closely with mentors and being paired with experienced employees.
I’m not exactly sure the types of mental models you are working with, Jeff, but I’m guessing they are quite complex?
Connie