Dimensions and elements of people's mental models of an information-rich Web space

Yan Zhang

doi:10.1002/asi.21406

Dimensions and elements of people's mental models of an information-rich Web space

Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology ◽

10.1002/asi.21406 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 61 (11) ◽

pp. 2206-2218 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

Yan Zhang

Keyword(s):

Mental Models ◽

Web Space

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Acquisition and Use of Mental Operators: Effects of Type of Practice

Experimental Psychology (formerly Zeitschrift für Experimentelle Psychologie) ◽

10.1027//1618-3169.49.2.141 ◽

2002 ◽

Vol 49 (2) ◽

pp. 141-152 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Burkhard Müller ◽

Jürgen Gehrke

Keyword(s):

Mental Models ◽

Test Performance ◽

Physical World ◽

Test Phase ◽

Acquisition Phase ◽

Practice Test ◽

Subsequent Test ◽

Use Of Knowledge

Abstract. Planning interactions with the physical world requires knowledge about operations; in short, mental operators. Abstractness of content and directionality of access are two important properties to characterize the representational units of this kind of knowledge. Combining these properties allows four classes of knowledge units to be distinguished that can be found in the literature: (a) rules, (b) mental models or schemata, (c) instances, and (d) episodes or chunks. The influence of practicing alphabet-arithmetic operators in a prognostic, diagnostic, or retrognostic way (A + 2 = ?, A? = C, or ? + 2 = C, respectively) on the use of that knowledge in a subsequent test was used to assess the importance of these dimensions. At the beginning, the retrognostic use of knowledge was worse than the prognostic use, although identical operations were involved (A + 2 = ? vs. ? - 2 = A). This disadvantage was reduced with increased practice. Test performance was best if the task and the letter pairs were the same as in the acquisition phase. Overall, the findings support theories proposing multiple representational units of mental operators. The disadvantage for the retrognosis task was recovered in the test phase, and may be evidence for the importance of the order of events independent of the order of experience.

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