Capturing and Categorizing Mental Models of Food Webs using QCM

This paper examines the use of qualitative representations in modeling the similarities and differences in causal reasoning for biological kinds between Menominee Native Americans and US majority culture. Qualitative Concept Maps are used for modeling and analyzing transcripts of interviews conducted with these groups. The individual models are used to construct generalizations for the groups, which are tested both by inspection and by creating a classifier to distinguish models from these two cultures.