Mental Method

Mental Models are the representation, image or schemes about how we as human perceive and understand the surrounded world. It is the internal understanding about something how its work. It is the ideas and belief and verbal description which we consciously or unconsciously that we have already from our own experience and which lead our activities and thoughts inside the narrow channels. All of the representations of the perceived reality explain everything to us such as the causes and all the effects, along with that it will help to understand and expect certain things, and producing meaningful event, with letting us to behave in certain ways. Mental Model provides an internal stability, it is the abstraction of the real world and the surrounded environment, the mental model is easier than the real word. As whatever we do and how well we construct at the end all the models are wrong at some point or time. As the economics develops and evolves, the current mental model which is perfect and successful will become old and outdated. That’s why refreshing the organization's leaders mental method is the main requirement of the strategic management competency. There are two categories of Mental Model and they are based on the acquisition method. Explicit Models are the models which we learnt from learning various conditions for example, physics, maths, economics and so on, it is when you study the model from out the various sources and apply it into a situation where it works, it is the model which your own mind creates it from the different patterns which are available around us and the one which we notice it through our five senses. In the other hand the implicit mental methods are very difficult to find as they are basically in the back there behind the scenes, misrepresent reality to fit the beliefs, we can detect these implicit models through various ways. The first one is from our culture instruct us even if we are not aware of it. As its not giving us any idea about knowing it or if it is there we only assume about in which way the things should be. One of the fact is lost of people aren’t aware of the effects of their own culture unless they leave it and live abroad. Secondly through peer group, being with a group for sometime at the end you will seek to change and adapt your mental models to be the same as the leader of the group. This behavior is a normal one and its total outside the awareness. The last way is from the media, it can’t ignore there are various media available such as shows, magazine, newspaper and movies, all of them built on assumptions which eventually ends by reinforcing the mental models of the reality.

The systemic thinking is the process about understanding and transforming complex problem and situations. It is affecting the whole organism as it deals with the behavior as whole and it responds to the external influences . On the other had the holistic thinking which deals with the complex as whole rather than parts, but in some situations we can define the whole , so we start to look at the whole to realize that we should look into the bigger picture, then the whole will consider as a part, so one way where the holistic tend to simplify the holes by taking multiple partial views. When we understand the meaning and definition of the system, we will actually find that it attempt to simplify and rationalize the mental, as the mental models is a general word it is whole, however the systemic and holistic thinking are defined to guide the mental model and allocate and practice it in simplifying and solving lots of situations. The systemic thinking is a part of the holistic thinking and the holistic thinking is a part of the mental model.

There are several limitations for mental model such as the available facilitation methods which is available for studying the mental models are not mainly designed to measure mental model it is available to improve the model. The mental model of the participant is usually changed before or at the same time in the process of measurement. However while the facilitator start to involve his ideas in the process of measurement, the participants start to give his ideas and feedback, as a result the mental models of the group start to change. Therefore in the first step in the process of changing the client mental model it will not allow to check the effectiveness of the intervention as there is no data is collected for the pre-intervention.

Starting with the typical intervention, at the beginning of the process a very great and important care is taken to derive clients mental models. After that they start to collect and combine evidence regarding the changes of the mental model in desirable way. At the time where they measured the mental model after the intervention, if this done, they can determine if any change is observed due to the changes in the mental models, in order to avoid this case mental model should be measured exactly the same procedure and way at the beginning and the end of the intervention. Due to the "subject bias" psychologists, the client may know what the intervener needs to know he might tall different feedback then what actually he feels, therefore it is very important to drive the mental models of the clients during the post test rather than asking them in the end of the intervention.
The researchers proved that the more improved dynamic mental models facilitated by the system thinking interventions more easily are accepted and remain satiable.

The psychological studies say that whenever a new mental model is introduced , the older mental model does not disappear exactly, it stays in the memory to compete with the new one. However at the time of the decision making the mind depends more on the older mental model as it was used more and linked to the information which is stored in the long term memory. The newly mental model should be practiced more frequently in order to keep it in mind and not to forget it quickly.

Setting in group will be a serious limitation of gathering mental models. As we can predict that everyone in the group reached the shared consensus are actually adopted the shared model. In order to measure the changes in mental model they should elicit and compare the mental models of each member in an individual. Valuable information might be ignored by eliciting mental models in groups, as it is known that in the group setting brainstorming gather less ideas and lower quality than the same participant working with individual. As by group gathering ideas and though might be interrupted by others.
When the facilitator takes the acting role in the measurement process for the mental models it will be a problem. As the facilitator take the role of explaining and summarizing the participants ideas and controlling the discussion direction, the facilitator may give the participant the ideas of what is better than what due to that it will lead the discussion to the direction which is the facilitator wants not the participants ideas, as well as lost and important information might be lost in the participant mind as the facilitator decide when to end the conversation and when to go to the next topic, facilitator asks questions about something which the participant may not be well aware of it, so the participant might go to wild guessing which will lead to surfer in unreliable details.
The ill defined and different task which is given by the facilitator to the client in the sessions. It might be different that they procedure when naturally people make their decisions. Changing the way of the questions or the topic of the questions may lead to an entire change in the client mental model from the one is available in their memory, therefore the task of decision making should be defined same as the one which he has already.
Introducing new methods to people in order to describe their thinking may change the structure and content of the surface representation of the mental models of the clients, it will cause errors as people misunderstanding if the new procedures. Mental model should be introduced in such way which is close to the typical way that the people already communicate their ideas.
Mental model must be included in the system thinking as it is a very important component of the system structure. The mental models are shown in the system thinking diagrams in two ways, the first one is as a thought which is connected to an arrow, the thought explains the reason for choice or action presented by the link. The second way is variable measuring to the extent to which a certain model is held. Our mental model is the system thinking diagrams. As the mental model is everything that a person has as belief, ideas, information's and opinion, the mental model is something which is changeable it can be changed under some circumstances, as everything can be changed your ideas, information as well as opinions, system thinking is not a randomly process of thinking, as any ideas or answer will come from the mental models, which to bring any idea we will go through process of thinking which could be rational or logical or any type of thinking, for example when something is wrong is your computer you might assume that the damage in a particular part this is from your mental model, however when you do more thinking such as causal thinking you will find that your first idea is wrong and the error is in another part. The system thinking has come to organize the ideas and information which we have it already from the mental models. More example is the mental models varies from person to another and it depends on the culture and the environment they are available, mental models are the personal thoughts but the system thinking the way to consequence these ideas.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mental_model http://www.lauradove.info/reports/mental%20models.htm
http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/mental-models.html