Mental Models and Pragmatics
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What's in a Mental Model of a Dynamic System? Conceptual Structure and Model Comparison
What’s in a mental model of a dynamic system? Conceptual structure and model comparison Martin Schaffernicht Facultad de Ciencias Empresariales Universidad de Talca Avenida Lircay s/n 3460000 Talca, CHILE [email protected] Stefan N. Groesser University of St. Gallen Institute of Management System Dynamics Group Dufourstrasse 40a CH - 9000 St. Gallen, Switzerland Tel: +41 71 224 23 82 / Fax: +41 71 224 23 55 [email protected] Contribution to the International System Dynamics Conference 2009 Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A. Abstract This paper deals with the representation of mental models of dynamic systems (MMDS). Improving ’mental models’ has always been fundamental in the field of system dynamics. Even though a specific definition exists, no conceptual model of the structure of a MMDS has been offered so far. Previous research about the learning effects of system dynamics interventions have used two methods to represent and analyze mental models. To what extend is the result of these methods comparable? Can they be used to account for a MMDS which is suitable for the system dynamics methodology? Two exemplary MMDSs are compared with both methods. We have found that the procedures and results differ significantly . In addition, neither of the methods can account for the concept of feedback loops. Based on this finding, we propose a conceptual model for the structure of a MMDS, a method to compare them, and a revised definition of MMDS. The paper concludes with a call for more substantive research. Keywords : Mental models, dynamic systems, mental model comparison, graph theory, mental model measurement Introduction Mental models have been a key concept in system dynamics from the beginning of the field (Forrester, 1961). -
Presupposition As Investigator Certainty in a Police Interrogation: the Case of Lorenzo Montoya’S False Confession
Presupposition as investigator certainty in a police interrogation: The case of Lorenzo Montoya’s false confession Author: Philip Gaines This is a postprint of an article that originally appeared in Discourse & Society on July 2018. The final version can be found at https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0957926518754417. Gaines, Philip. "Presupposition as investigator certainty in a police interrogation: The case of Lorenzo Montoya's false confession." Discourse & Society 29, no. 4 (July 2018): 399-419. DOI:10.1177/0957926518754417. Made available through Montana State University’s ScholarWorks scholarworks.montana.edu Presupposition as investigator certainty in a police interrogation: The case of Lorenzo Montoya’s false confession Philip Gaines Montana State University, USA Abstract This article presents an analysis of the use by police investigators of presupposition-bearing questions (PBQs) in interrogation as a process for communicating certainty of guilt. Among the techniques of interrogational maximization employed by police is the communication to the suspect of the interrogators’ certainty of the suspect’s guilt. While social science research notes that such communication of certainty is given directly, for example by statements that they ‘know’ the suspect is guilty or by direct accusations such as ‘you did it’, this analysis shows that certainty of guilt can also be communicated by presuppositions embedded in interrogation questions. Discourse analysis of the complete transcript of the interrogation of a 14-year-old suspect reveals further that through the use of 177 PBQs, interrogators are able to accrue inadvertent admissions to three crucial global ‘facts’ about the suspect’s involvement in the crime – each of which is composed of multiple subsidiary ‘facts’. -
Psychology, Meaning Making and the Study of Worldviews: Beyond Religion and Non-Religion
Psychology, Meaning Making and the Study of Worldviews: Beyond Religion and Non-Religion Ann Taves, University of California, Santa Barbara Egil Asprem, Stockholm University Elliott Ihm, University of California, Santa Barbara Abstract: To get beyond the solely negative identities signaled by atheism and agnosticism, we have to conceptualize an object of study that includes religions and non-religions. We advocate a shift from “religions” to “worldviews” and define worldviews in terms of the human ability to ask and reflect on “big questions” ([BQs], e.g., what exists? how should we live?). From a worldviews perspective, atheism, agnosticism, and theism are competing claims about one feature of reality and can be combined with various answers to the BQs to generate a wide range of worldviews. To lay a foundation for the multidisciplinary study of worldviews that includes psychology and other sciences, we ground them in humans’ evolved world-making capacities. Conceptualizing worldviews in this way allows us to identify, refine, and connect concepts that are appropriate to different levels of analysis. We argue that the language of enacted and articulated worldviews (for humans) and worldmaking and ways of life (for humans and other animals) is appropriate at the level of persons or organisms and the language of sense making, schemas, and meaning frameworks is appropriate at the cognitive level (for humans and other animals). Viewing the meaning making processes that enable humans to generate worldviews from an evolutionary perspective allows us to raise news questions for psychology with particular relevance for the study of nonreligious worldviews. Keywords: worldviews, meaning making, religion, nonreligion Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Raymond F. -
Entailment, Presupposition, and Implicature in the Work of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'brien
Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1994 The tS ylistic Mechanics of Implicitness: Entailment, Presupposition, and Implicature in the Work of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien. Donna Glee Williams Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation Williams, Donna Glee, "The tS ylistic Mechanics of Implicitness: Entailment, Presupposition, and Implicature in the Work of Ernest Hemingway and Tim O'Brien." (1994). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5768. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5768 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough,m asubstandard r gins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. -
Effectiveness of Holistic Mental Model Confrontation in Driving Conceptual Change
Learning and Instruction xxx (2011) 1e15 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Learning and Instruction journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/learninstruc Effectiveness of holistic mental model confrontation in driving conceptual change Soniya Gadgil a,*, Timothy J. Nokes-Malach a, Michelene T.H. Chi b a Department of Psychology, Learning Research and Development Center, University of Pittsburgh, United States b Department of Psychology, Arizona State University, United States article info abstract Article history: Prior research on conceptual change has identified multiple kinds of misconceptions at different levels of Received 17 July 2010 representational complexity including false beliefs, flawed mental models, and incorrect ontological Received in revised form categories. We hypothesized that conceptual change of a mental model requires change in the system of 5 June 2011 relations between the features of the prior model. To test this hypothesis, we compared instruction aimed Accepted 8 June 2011 at revising knowledge at the mental model level called holistic confrontation e in which the learner compares and contrasts a diagram of his or her flawed mental model to an expert model e to instruction Keywords: aimed at revising knowledge at the false belief level e in which the learner is prompted to self-explain Learning Conceptual change the expert model alone. We found evidence that participants who engaged in holistic confrontation were Comparison more likely to acquire a correct mental model, and a deeper understanding of the systems of relations in Mental models the model than those who were prompted to self-explain the expert model. The results are discussed in Self-explanation terms of their implications for science instruction. -
Mental Models in Expert Physics Reasoning. INSTITUTION California Univ., Berkeley
DOCUMENT RESUME ED 285 736 SE 048 324 AUTHOR Roschelle, Jeremy; Greeno, James G. TITLE Mental Models in Expert Physics Reasoning. INSTITUTION California Univ., Berkeley. SPONS AGENCY Office of Naval Research, Washington, D.C. Personnel and Training Branch. REPORT NO GA-2 PUB DATE Jul 87 CONTRACT N00014-85-K-0095 NOTE 29p.; For related documents, see SE 048 323-327. PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) EDRS PRICE MF01/PCO2 Plus Postage. DESCRIPTORS *Physics; *Problem Solving; Science Education; *Science Instruction; Sciences IDENTIFIERS *Experts; *Mental Models ABSTRACT Proposed is a relational framework for characterizing experienced physicists' representations of physics problem situations and the process of constructing these representations. A representation includes a coherent set of relations among: (1) a mental model of the objects in the situation, along with their relevant properties and relations; (2) a mental model of theoretical idealizations of objects; and (3) parameter histories based on mental simulations of both models. Evidence from protocols and a small experiment support a conclusion that experienced physicists' processes of representing problem situations (a) use informal commonsense knowledge, including envisionment of objects in the situations, and (b) are interactive, with mutual. influences between informal knowledge and their technical, theorc.t.cal knowledge. Also described are characteristics of the mental models that represent problem situations and the process of constructing them, drawing from work by artificial intelligence researchers on qualitative process models, and specifying several categories of rules that would be needed for an implementation of the system as a simulation program. (Author/RH) ********************k****2********************************************* Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. -
What Is Presupposition Accommodation?
Draft version from July 2000 What is Presupposition Accommodation? Kai von Fintel MIT In his paper “What is a Context of Utterance?”, Christopher Gauker (1998) argues that the phenomenon of informative presuppositions is incompatible with the “pragmatic” view of presuppositions as involving requirements on the common ground, the body of shared assumptions of the participants in a conversation. This is a surprising claim since most proponents of this view have in fact dealt with informative presuppositions by appealing to a process called presupposition accommodation. Gauker’s attack shows the need to clarify the nature of this process. Introduction: The Common Ground Theory of Presuppositions Here is a stylized version of the picture of information-gathering discourse developed by Stalnaker.1 The common ground of a conversation at a particular time is the set of propositions that the participants in that conversation at that time mutually assume to be taken for granted and not subject to (further) discussion. The common ground describes a set of worlds, the context set, which are those worlds in which all of the propositions in the common ground are true. The context set is the set of worlds that for all that is currently assumed to be taken for granted, could be the actual world. 1 Stalnaker (1972, 1973, 1974, 1978, 1988, 1998). Other important work in this tradition includes Karttunen (1974), Lewis (1979), Heim (1982, 1983, 1992), and Thomason (1990). When uttered assertively, sentences are meant to update the common ground. If the sentence is accepted by the participants, the proposition it expresses is added to the common ground. -
An Analysis of Presupposition Triggers in Hilary Clinton's First
International Journal of English Linguistics; Vol. 6, No. 5; 2016 ISSN 1923-869X E-ISSN 1923-8703 Published by Canadian Center of Science and Education An Analysis of Presupposition Triggers in Hilary Clinton’s First Campaign Speech Ruiqing Liang1 & Yabin Liu1 1 School of Foreign Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China Correspondence: Yabin Liu, School of Foreign Studies, Jinan University, Guangzhou, China. E-mail: [email protected] Received: July 19, 2016 Accepted: August 9, 2016 Online Published: September 23, 2016 doi:10.5539/ijel.v6n5p68 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijel.v6n5p68 This paper is supported by “the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities” (grant no.: 15JNYH007) and “the National Social Science Foundation of China” (grant no.:12BYY119). Abstract Presupposition triggers play a vital role in verbal communication. Based on Hilary Clinton’s first campaign speech, this paper intends to analyze the presupposition triggers at both lexical and syntactic levels, for the purpose of figuring out how Hilary succeeds in achieving her political intentions through the use of presupposition triggers, hoping to contribute to the composition and understanding of political speeches. Keywords: presupposition triggers, presupposition, Hilary Clinton, political speech 1. Introduction Presupposition, first put forward by German philosopher Gottlob Frege in 1892, was originally studied in philosophy of language and later introduced to the field of linguistics. As the study of presupposition continues, it has been found that presuppositions are typically generated by the use of lexical items or linguistic constructions. These lexical items and linguistic constructions are called presupposition triggers (Levinson, 1983; Huang, 2007). Presupposition has long been used as a property of language to mold the audience’s ideology. -
Constructing Mental Model Paradigms for Teaching Electronic Resources
Volume 2, 1999 Approved January 1999 ISSN: 1523-4320 www.ala.org/aasl/slr Constructing Mental Model Paradigms for Teaching Electronic Resources Julie I. Tallman, Associate Professor, Department of Instructional Technology, The University of Georgia, and Lyn Henderson, Senior Lecturer, School of Education, James Cook University of North Queensland, Australia Library media specialists activate numerous mental models when teaching electronic information literacy database access, research, and retrieval in the context of authentic school assignments. The paper identifies these models and examines what occurred when the mental models in a study sample interconnected in the complex changing environment of a lesson. Discussion focuses on the changes to the mental models the library media specialists held with respect to the electronic database, the role of the library media specialist, the lesson goals, and their teaching strategies. Findings suggest that (a) most of the library media specialists’ mental models of teaching with electronic databases were influenced by their models of teaching access, research, and retrieval with print resources and (b) even though many library media specialists identified the necessity to incorporate mental model changes for more effective teaching, these were not sufficient to counteract their habituated teaching behaviors. New policy thrusts in education are increasing the range of electronic learning technologies for use by students, placing them as central to the core curriculum, and calling for equitable access to information via these technologies (Tallman 1998). Part of this equity includes individualized instruction to help students “develop a systematic mode of inquiry to gain physical and intellectual access to information and ideas that reflect diversity of experiences, opinions, and social and cultural perspectives” (American Association of School Librarians and Association for Educational Communications and Technology 1988, 29). -
Presupposition: a Semantic Or Pragmatic Phenomenon?
Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume. 8 Number. 3 September, 2017 Pp. 46 -59 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol8no3.4 Presupposition: A Semantic or Pragmatic Phenomenon? Mostafa OUALIF Department of English Studies Faculty of Letters and Humanities Ben M’sik, Casablanca Hassan II University, Casablanca, Morocco Abstract There has been debate among linguists with regards to the semantic view and the pragmatic view of presupposition. Some scholars believe that presupposition is purely semantic and others believe that it is purely pragmatic. The present paper contributes to the ongoing debate and exposes the different ways presupposition was approached by linguists. The paper also tries to attend to (i) what semantics is and what pragmatics is in a unified theory of meaning and (ii) the possibility to outline a semantic account of presupposition without having recourse to pragmatics and vice versa. The paper advocates Gazdar’s analysis, a pragmatic analysis, as the safest grounds on which a working grammar of presupposition could be outlined. It shows how semantic accounts are inadequate to deal with the projection problem. Finally, the paper states explicitly that the increasingly puzzling theoretical status of presupposition seems to confirm the philosophical contention that not any fact can be translated into words. Key words: entailment, pragmatics, presupposition, projection problem, semantic theory Cite as: OUALIF, M. (2017). Presupposition: A Semantic or Pragmatic Phenomenon? Arab World English Journal, 8 (3). DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.24093/awej/vol8no3.4 46 Arab World English Journal (AWEJ) Volume 8. Number. 3 September 2017 Presupposition: A Semantic or Pragmatic Phenomenon? OUALIF I. -
Models in the Mind the Mental Models Theory of Reasoning
Models in the Mind The Mental Models Theory of Reasoning: Refinements and Exten- sions. Edited by Walter Schaeken, Andr´eVandierendonck, Walter Schroyens, and G´eryd'Ydewalle. Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. How do people reason about the what follows from certain assumptions? How do they think about implications between statements. According to one theory, people try to use a small number of mental rules of inference to construct an argument for or proof of a relevant conclusion from the assump- tions (e.g., Rips 1994). According to a competing theory, people construct one or more mental models of the situation described in the assumptions and try to determine what conclusion fits with the model or models constructed (e.g., Johnson-Laird 1983, 2006). The present collection offers eleven con- tributions to the mental models theory. Specific theories about such reasoning can be tested by asking subjects what follows from certain assumptions. Subjects can also be asked whether a particular stated conclusion follows or is implied by the assumptions. And subjects can be given problems that seem to require such reasoning, such as the familiar the Wason (1966) selection task. In this task, four cards are placed before a subject on the table. The subject is told that the cards have a letter on one side and a number on the other wide. The subject sees only one side of the cards, e.g. \A 3 B 4". The subject is asked to indicate which of the cards need to be turned over in order to determine whether a certain claim about the cards is correct: for example, the claim that, if there is a vowel on one side, there is an even number on the other side. -
Maintaining the Mental Model: an Exploratory Study of Dialogic Processes on Good Teaching Practice
Pedagogy and the Human Sciences Volume 3 Issue 1 Article 1 2013 Maintaining the Mental Model: An Exploratory Study of Dialogic Processes on Good Teaching Practice Margaret Koepke Fox Suffolk University, [email protected] Debra A. Harkins Suffolk University, [email protected] Kurt W. Fischer Harvard University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.merrimack.edu/phs Recommended Citation Fox, M. K., Harkins, D. A., & Fischer, K. W. (2013). Maintaining the Mental Model: An Exploratory Study of Dialogic Processes on Good Teaching Practice. Pedagogy and the Human Sciences, 3 (1), 1-23. Retrieved from https://scholarworks.merrimack.edu/phs/vol3/iss1/1 This Feature Article is brought to you for free and open access by Merrimack ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Pedagogy and the Human Sciences by an authorized editor of Merrimack ScholarWorks. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Fox et al.: Dialogic Processes on Teaching Practice Pedagogy and the Human Sciences, 1, No. 3, 2013, pp. 1-23 Maintaining the Mental Model: An Exploratory Study of Dialogic Processes on Good Teaching Practice Margaret Koepke Fox,1 Debra A. Harkins,2 and Kurt W. Fischer3 Abstract. This paper presents some outcomes of an exploratory, mixed-method study that examined mental models of teaching and understanding of learning processes in 26 educators from a small suburb in the Northeastern United States. Participants, in semi- structured written interviews, were asked to rate variables contributing to their mental model of effective teaching. They were then presented with a specific educational problem and asked to provide pedagogic solutions.