"A mental model is a cognitive construct that describes a person's understanding of a particular content domain in the world." (John Sown, "Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine", 1984)
"A mental model is a data structure, in a computational system, that represents a part of the real world or of a fictitious world." (Alan Granham, "Mental Models as Representations of Discourse and Text", 1987)
"[…] a mental model is a mapping from a domain into a mental representation which contains the main characteristics of the domain; a model can be ‘run’ to generate explanations and expectations with respect to potential states. Mental models have been proposed in particular as the kind of knowledge structures that people use to understand a specific domain […]" (Helmut Jungermann, Holger Schütz & Manfred Thuering, "Mental models in risk assessment: Informing people about drugs", Risk Analysis 8 (1), 1988)
"A mental model is a knowledge structure that incorporates both declarative knowledge (e.g., device models) and procedural knowledge (e.g., procedures for determining distributions of voltages within a circuit), and a control structure that determines how the procedural and declarative knowledge are used in solving problems (e.g., mentally simulating the behavior of a circuit)." (Barbara Y White & John R Frederiksen, "Causal Model Progressions as a Foundation for Intelligent Learning Environments", Artificial Intelligence 42, 1990)
"’Mental models’ are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action. [...] Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting." (Peter Senge, "The Fifth Discipline”, 1990)
"[A mental model] is a relatively enduring and accessible, but limited, internal conceptual representation of an external system (historical, existing, or projected) [italics in original] whose structure is analogous to the perceived structure of that system." (James K Doyle & David N Ford, "Mental models concepts revisited: Some clarifications and a reply to Lane", System Dynamics Review 15 (4), 1999)
"In broad terms, a mental model is to be understood as a dynamic symbolic representation of external objects or events on the part of some natural or artificial cognitive system. Mental models are thought to have certain properties which make them stand out against other forms of symbolic representations." (Gert Rickheit & Lorenz Sichelschmidt, "Mental Models: Some Answers, Some Questions, Some Suggestions", 1999)
"A mental model is conceived […] as a knowledge structure possessing slots that can be filled not only with empirically gained information but also with ‘default assumptions’ resulting from prior experience. These default assumptions can be substituted by updated information so that inferences based on the model can be corrected without abandoning the model as a whole. Information is assimilated to the slots of a mental model in the form of ‘frames’ which are understood here as ‘chunks’ of knowledge with a well-defined meaning anchored in a given body of shared knowledge." (Jürgen Renn, “Before the Riemann Tensor: The Emergence of Einstein’s Double Strategy", 2005)
"A mental model is a mental representation that captures what is common to all the different ways in which the premises can be interpreted. It represents in 'small scale' how 'reality' could be - according to what is stated in the premises of a reasoning problem. Mental models, though, must not be confused with images." (Carsten Held et al, "Mental Models and the Mind", 2006)
"’Mental models’ are deeply ingrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action." (Jossey-Bass Publishers, "The Jossey-Bass Reader on Educational Leadership”, 2nd Ed. 2007)
"A mental model is an internal representation with analogical relations to its referential object, so that local and temporal aspects of the object are preserved." (Gert Rickheit et al, "The concept of communicative competence" [in "Handbook of Communication Competence"], 2008)
"Internal representations constructed on the spot when required by demands of an external task or by a self-generated stimulus. It enables activation of relevant schemata, and allows new knowledge to be integrated. It specifies causal actions among concepts that take place within it, and it can be interacted with in the mind." (Daniel Churchill, "Mental Models" [in "Encyclopedia of Information Technology Curriculum Integration"] , 2008)
"Mental models are representations of reality built in people’s minds. These models are based on arrangements of assumptions, judgments, and values. A main weakness of mental models is that people’s assumptions and judgments change over time and are applied in inconsistent ways when building explanations of the world." (Luis F Luna-Reyes, "System Dynamics to Understand Public Information Technology", 2008)
"A mental model is the collection of concepts and relationships about the image of real world things we carry in our heads" (Hassan Qudrat-Ullah, "System Dynamics Based Technology for Decision Support", 2009)
"A mental recreation of the states of the world reproduced cognitively in order to offer itself as a basis for reasoning." (Eshaa M Alkhalifa, "Open Student Models", 2009)
[Shared Mental Model:] "A mental model that is shared among team members, and may include: 1) task-specific knowledge, 2) task-related knowledge, 3) knowledge of teammates and 4) attitudes/beliefs." (Rosemarie Reynolds et al, "Measuring Shared Mental Models in Unmanned Aircraft Systems", 2015)
"A network of knowledge content, as well as the relationships among the content."(Rosemarie Reynolds et al, "Measuring Shared Mental Models in Unmanned Aircraft Systems", 2015)
"A mental model (aka mental representation/image/picture) is a mental structure that attempts to model (depict, imagine) how real or imaginary things look like, work or fit together." (The Web of Knowledge) [source]
Resources:
Quotes on "Mental Models" at the-web-of-knowledge.blogspot.com.
