Learning Engineering Applies the Learning Sciences
Jim Goodell, Janet Kolodner in Learning Engineering Toolkit, 2023
Mia’s fourth- or fifth-grade teacher will need to help her transform and refine her existing concept of quantity into a more sophisticated form that includes negative numbers. Cognitive scientists would say this is refining an imperfect mental model of how the universe works so that it’s more accurate and consistent with new experiences.4 As this description implies, the idea of mental models recognizes that people construct small-scale internal models of the world and of their places in it.5 Old ideas can combine with new ones to improve upon a naïve or imperfect understanding or ability.6 No one can know all things, so we do our best to create those internal representations and then fill in the gaps to make sense of what we already know or eventually learn. Children learning the concept of negative values must, in a sense, build in their mind an improved internal model so they can better understand how quantity works in the real world. As they adjust their mental models, new connections are formed in the structures of the brain. In the case of learning to add and subtract, the new mental model must eventually work for both positive and negative quantities.
The learning and teaching clinician
Nassab Reza, Rajaratnam Vaikunthan, Loh Michael, B. Sonny Bal in Applying MBA Knowledge and Skills to Healthcare, 2017
Senge identifies five learning disciplines to building a learning organisation. These are as follows. ➤ Personal mastery – This is the discipline of continual personal development through commitment to learning.➤ Mental models – These are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalisations, or even pictures and images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.➤ Building shared vision – A shared vision of future direction that is inspirational to an organisation is instrumental to motivate its achievement.➤ Team learning – It is suggested that better results and more rapid growth occur when teams learn together as opposed to individuals.➤ Systems thinking – This is the fifth discipline that integrates the previous four and describes their interaction with one another.
Living language and the resonant self
Anthony Korner in Communicative Exchange, Psychotherapy and the Resonant Self, 2020
The world around us becomes affectively invested and familiar during childhood development. James’ emphasis on “warmth and familiarity” prioritizes a positively toned felt experience of well-being as conducive to being sensed as self rather than alien. James refers to the early process of a “splitting of the whole universe into two halves… we… call… ‘me’ and ‘not-me’ respectively” (James, 1890, p. 289). The human capacity to sustain felt experience in a mind where succeeding chunks of consciousness have “memory” (though not absolute or everlasting) of preceding chunks, is critical to James’ idea that “thought is itself the thinker” (James, 1890, p. 401). This insight refers to felt qualities that have a life in the body, reflected in brain maps, invoking a model of consciousness that doesn’t require a “centre” of consciousness within the brain. “Mental models” grow in implicit memory systems, helping the mind anticipate its environment (Siegel, 2015). Positive hedonic tone is important in terms of what can be “owned”, internally, as “me”. This is reflected in a quote James was fond of citing, “to miss the joy is to miss all. In the joy of the actors lies the sense of any action” (James, 1899; Stevenson, 1899).
Mental models of adherence: parallels in perceptions, values, and expectations in adherence to prescribed home exercise programs and other personal regimens
Published in Disability and Rehabilitation, 2019
Jon Rizzo, Alexandra Bell
This study has several strengths in its approach to investigating adherence. We applied research in the social sciences indicating that that mental models influence decision-making and behavior [15,18,38] to identify aspects of patients mental models pertinent to their adherence to a prescribed home exercise program. Mental models are an accumulation of individuals perspectives, values, and expectations about a given phenomenon and individuals implicitly construct mental models from prior experience [15]. In constructing mental models, individuals compare and contrast experiences in one life domain that have functional similarity with experiences in different life domains [17]. Findings from this study strongly align with this conceptualization of mental models, as participants perceptions of realized results, expectations for future results, perceptions of social relationships, and value for convenience were apparent in their adherence to personal regimens as well their prescribed home exercise program. These parallels between perceptions, values, and expectations related to adherence across life domains suggest a new frontier for clinicians seeking to motivate patients to adhere to home exercise programs.
Mechanistic reasoning in neursourgery
Published in British Journal of Neurosurgery, 2019
Patrick Mitchell
For the foreseeable future, within neurosurgery, mechanistic reasoning is going to remain the less reliable but more widely applicable method of evidence based decision making. We can write down explicitly the mental models that we use in our daily practice. We can refine, test and publish these models. We can confer and collaborate to agree on what models are sound and what aren’t. We can put the predictions and models to test with the highest grade of observational data that it is feasible to collect. Armed with increasingly tested and calibrated models we can apply them with increasing precision to individual patients and observe actions borne out in reality. In other words, if we take the whole process of mechanistic reasoning seriously, we may not be focusing on the most reliable means of evidence gathering but we will be able to make substantial improvements in decision making in areas currently most weakly supported by observational evidence. And we can make what high quality observational evidence is available go further by extending its applicability to groups of patients who are underrepresented in the primary observational research for whatever reasons such as lack of equipoise or low incidence of the condition.
The Importance of Shared Understanding within Football Teams
Published in Journal of Sport Psychology in Action, 2020
Michael K. Malone, Ross Lorimer
However, this exchange of knowledge is only possible through an effective shared mental model that is developed over time performing together (Mathieu et al., 2000). For instance, if the whole team practice transitioning the ball forward during training sessions, defenders will know what type of pass is best to give certain attackers (i.e., a ball over the top of the opposition defense or to the attacker’s feet). This knowledge will help the team keep possession of the ball, increasing the effectiveness of their performance and their chance of scoring goals. In addition to developing an understanding of what team members are likely to do and what their preferences are, Salas et al. (2005) state that within a successful team, members have specific knowledge of each other that allow players to modify the workload between team members (i.e. backup behaviors) if there are situations that require it.
Related Knowledge Centers
- Cognition
- Cognitive Flexibility
- Gestalt Psychology
- Working Memory
- Decision-Making
- Mental Representation
- Schema
- Psychology of Reasoning
- Counterfactual Thinking
- Selective Perception