Mental representation

Signal-flow graphs are useful in another sense they provide an objective representation of "how the system works" which can be used to evaluate the worker s subjective mental representation of the system. The influence modeling and assessment (IMAS) technique, which is described in subsequent sections, can also be used to elicit the worker s representation of the system. Both techniques, IMAS and SFG, can therefore be used for training personnel. 

Ever since Johnstone (1993) addressed the three levels of chemistry (symbolic, macro, and microscopic, called submicro currently), many studies have investigated how multimedia could support the constraction, development, and evaluation of students mental representations of chemistiy at the three levels. The studies in the previous chapters mention that the representations of the macro-submicro-symbolic relationship play important roles in chemical concept learning. 

According to Vosniadou (2002), generative questions are those that cannot be answered on the basis of stored information but require the genuine solution of a new problem. Therefore, in order to answer a generative question, the subjeet must ereate a mental representation or a mental model of the entity and explore it in order to derive from it a relevant answer (Vosniadou, 2002, p. 358). 

In general, quality is assessed by quantifiable traits that are more or less related to specific attributes of the product and the production process. Moreover, the assessment depends on the information delivered by the sensory organs. Information is filtered and evaluated by the brain depending on the specific information provided but also on the concept of understanding that already exists in the cerebral cortex (Singer, 2000). A mental representation of a sensory event can shape neural processes that underlie the formulation of the actual sensory experience. Thus, the subjective sensory experience is shaped by interactions between expectations and incoming sensory information. 

To understand this view, it is necessary to understand an interest as a mental representation of a utility. Interests have different properties, among them a "characteristic period of dominance a length of time when an interest s discount curve rises above those of its competitors. The period will depend on the kinds of rewards the interest has arisen to exploit and on the intrinsic limitations of their particular modes of exploitation. This period, in turn, will have major effects on what behaviors particular interests typically favor" (Ainslie 1992,96). In this perspective, he defines addictions as behavior caused by interests that dominate other interests in periods ranging from hours to days and states that addictions have a "clear phase of conscious though temporary preference, followed by an equally clear period of regret" (Ibid., 97). Other types of interest have other periods of dominance. The period of domination for pains is fractions of seconds, that for itches seconds to minutes, and that for sellouts months to years. 

In most humans in most contemporary societies, the quick and dirty path is relatively unimportant. Success and survival do not turn heavily on split-second decisions. Instead, decisions and the concomitant emotions depend crucially on prior cognitive processing of the situation. In animals other than humans, it is often difficult to decide whether what looks like an emotional reaction is triggered by a mental representation of the situation or whether it is merely a learned response. The apparent guilt of the dog that has shredded the newspaper in its owner s absence may simply be a conditioned fear of punishment, since the same response is produced when the owner himself shreds the newspaper and leaves it on the floor (Vollmer 1977). 

Frequently, consciousness in the sense of re-presenting what is absent goes together with consciousness in the sense of pre-intentional transparency. Freud, or some Freudians, may be understood assaying that there can be consciousness in the first sense unaccompanied by consciousness in the second sense. This, if 1 understand him rightly, is how David Pears (1984, p. 79) interprets and defends Freud s doctrine of the preconscious. On this view, mental representations may exist and do their work, whatever that is, even when the person cannot tell whether he has them. (To assert that they exist but do not do any work when the person does not know that he has them, is not, I believe, to say anything.) The preconscious on this conception is not just a storehouse from which mental entities or their precursors can be retrieved... 

Frigden (1987) A mental representation of an object, person, place or event which is not physically before the observer... 

Baloglo and McLeary (1999) An attitudinal construct consisting of an individual s mental representations of knowledge, feelings and global impression about an object or destination... 

Paivio, A. (1990) Mental Representations A Dual Coding Approach. New York Oxford University Press. 

The ability to encode new information into memory and to retrieve previously stored information from memory is impaired in schizophrenia. Several models have proposed abnormalities of cortical-hippocampal circuitry as the mechanism for the abnormal mental representations seen in schizophrenia (Roberts, 1963 Venables, 1992 Hemsley, 1993 Talamini et al., 2005 Siekmeier et al., 2007). 

What is revealed by gesture is not merely the speaker s strategic thinking about how to visually convey information to conversational partner via gesture. Gesture reflects a mental representation that serves not only communicative but also speaker-internal purposes (Rime et al., 1984 ... 

Liben, L. S. (1999). Developing an understanding of external spatial representations. In I. E. Sigel (ed.), Development of mental representation (pp. 297-321). Mahwah, N.J. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. 

Operational thinking is one of the highest abilities of the human mind. It consists of the ability to create images or other mental representations of reality. The images may be sensory or abstract or symbolic. Then you can manipulate or play with those representations in order to answer... 

Two specific types of mental representations hypothesized to be used by the semantic memory system to organize information are schemas and categories. Schemas are ordered frameworks or outlines of world knowledge that help us organize and interpret new information. They are like maps or blueprints into which new related information will be fitted. Knowledge of your home town or city, with its streets, various buildings, and neighborhoods is an example of a schema. 

Yet even primate studies cannot tell us anything about the interplay between emotion and cognition that is a crucial aspect of emotions in humans. One reason is that the range of beliefs that can be held by other animals is so limited. We can distinguish objects of beliefs along three dimensions. First, the objects may be observable or unobservable. Second, they may be physical or mental. Third, they may be real or imagined. As far as I know, animals can only form beliefs about real, physical objects. These need not be observable. We know from many studies that animals are capable of forming mental representations of physical objects that are absent from the present sensory field.3 But there is no evidence that animals can form the more complex beliefs of which humans are capable, such as beliefs about mental states (beliefs, emotions, motivations) and counterfactual beliefs. I discuss these beliefs in IV.2. In particular, animals cannot form beliefs about their own emotions. Nor does there seem to be any evidence that animal beliefs can be distorted by emotion, in the ways that 1 discuss in II.3 and IV.3. 

Laszlo (1998) has cogently argued that in their practice of analysis, modern-day chemists "dematerialize" the substances they handle, so that the transactions of the contemporary laboratory mostly involve mental representations. He goes on to argue that our age of masterly... 

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