Constructing Adequate Mental Models

Understanding probability words by constructing concrete mental models

We propose a model of the representation and processing of uncertainty and use it to account for data from an experimental study of the use of probability words. Given two sentences, one using a probability word and the other phrased in terms of reasons-to-believe, subjects were asked to judge if the second was an acceptable paraphrase for the first. For certain word/paraphrase pairs there was ...

Constructing Representations of Mental Maps

This short paper presents continued work on a design tool presented at CHI '97 [7] and further described in WP99-01 and [8, 9]. WayMaker is a tool for mapping the layouts and structural features of graphical virtual environments. The tool is based on principles of mental mapping familiar to urban designers and planners. Here we describe usage sessions with practitioners in these disciplines. Th...

Constructing mental time without visual experience.

Across many cultures, people create spatial representations of time. The direction of mental timelines often follows the direction of writing in a person's language. A new study demonstrates that blind participants (who read with their hands) also show mental timelines that follow reading direction.

Adequate Models for Recursive Program Schemes

This thesis is a pedagogical exposition of adequacy for recursive program schemes in the monotone frame. Adequacy relates the operational and denotational meanings of a term; it states that for any term of base type, the operational and denotational meanings are identical. Adequacy is typically proved in the continuous frame. This is a pedagogically questionable step; in order to prove adequacy...

Smoking and mental health: do we have adequate insight?