Mining learner-generated sketches holds significant potential for acquiring deep insight into learners’ mental models. Drawing has been shown to benefit both learning outcomes and engagement, and learners’ sketches offer a rich source of diagnostic information. Unfortunately, interpreting learners’ sketches—even sketches comprised of semantically grounded symbols—poses significant computational...

Navigational impairments have previously been reported in autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study examined the ability of individuals with ASD to generate and scan their mental image of a previously viewed map. Twenty-one ASD adults and 20 ageand IQ-matched comparison adults memorised a map of a fictitious island containing a number of landmarks. They then mentally imagined the map an...

Classification of human thought is an emerging research field that may allow us to understand human brain functions and further develop advanced brain-computer interface (BCI) systems. In the present study, we introduce a new approach to classify various mental states from noninvasive electrophysiological recordings of human brain activity. We utilized the full spatial and spectral information ...

Any goal within the flight range of the bee is characterized by direction and distance from the hive. These two parameters are also the basic in­ formations transmitted in bee dances. The direc­ tion has to be calculated by using an individually acquired sun compass, whereas the distance is esti­ mated by the amount of energy invested during the flight [1], Local and distant landmarks are used ...

The theoretical underpinnings of various analyses of the social dimensions of ecosystem management are closely related to our mental models of human-nature relations. This article presents examples of eco-and anthropocentric, inter-disciplinary and complex system mind maps of human-nature relations. It shows that the interpretation of the social dimension in ecosystem management in each mind ma...

In this paper the authors propose a methodology for assessing the mental models individuals with cognitive disabilities use to perform simple to complex tasks. Fuzzy cognitive maps are sued as the modeling technique for capturing the attributes and the relationships that such individuals use in framing a problem, strategizing about alternate ways to solve it and implementing the solution chosen...

Humans have the ability to build and to inspect an internal visual image of an environment built from a verbal description. We used positron emission tomography (PET) to investigate the brain areas engaged in the mental scanning of a map that subjects built from the reading of a descriptive text. This task engaged a parieto-frontal network known to deal with spatial representations. Additional ...

Scientists have traditionally assumed that different kinds of mental states (e.g., fear, disgust, love, memory, planning, concentration, etc.) correspond to different psychological faculties that have domain-specific correlates in the brain. Yet, growing evidence points to the constructionist hypothesis that mental states emerge from the combination of domain-general psychological processes tha...

Imagine that you are walking around a city for the first time. You have a street map to help you navigate around this unfamiliar environment. The map you have in front of you is actually a “complicated communication mechanism” (Lobben, 2004). For effective navigation, we would have to efficiently perform a mental transformation from the 2D information contained on paper to a 3D impression in ou...