Systems Thinking Vocabulary

Mental Model

An internal representation of external reality

Quote
The image of the world around us, which we carry in our head, is just a model. Nobody in his head imagines all the world, government or country. He has only selected concepts, and relationships between them, and uses those to represent the real system (Jay Wright Forrester, 1971).
Categories: Systems Thinking
Abstract
Philip Johnson-Laird published Mental Models: Towards a Cognitive Science of Language, Inference and Consciousness in 1983. In the same year, Dedre Gentner and Albert Stevens edited a collection of chapters in a book also titled Mental Models. (Wikiversity)

Acknowledgement

References

Acknowledgement

Concept Coordinates

The phrase “mental model” is an overarching term for any sort of concept, framework, or worldview that you carry around in your mind. (James Clear)

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