Sustainability, as currently practiced, is primarily an exercise in efficiency. In other words, through the use of BREEAM, LEED, and other rating systems we are attempting to slow down the damage caused by excessive resource use. We must do better. Instead of doing less damage to the environment, it is necessary to learn how we can participate with the environment – using the health of ecologic...

In interactive layout a drawing is repeatedly modified either by the user or by the assistance system. A usability requirement states that the assistance system should alter the layout such that the user’s mental map is preserved. This work concretises mental map preservation from a cognitive science perspective. A notion of similarity that is based on the idea of transforming spatial mental mo...

more than any other work available, better inform future students (and future medical historians) about the continuity and changes in the ways in which health and disease have been perceived throughout United States history. This book will serve as an exemplary model for complementary publications that could focus upon different temporal and geographical regions. In a sense it is surprising tha...

We develop a general neural network-based architecture for the process of mental simulation, initially treated at a somewhat abstract level. To develop the theory further it is shown how the theory can handle observational learning as a specific form of mental simulation: simulations are presented of simple paradigms and results obtained on children undergoing tests on observational learning. Q...

BACKGROUND This study aimed to test the vulnerability model of the relationship between temperament and mental disorders using a large sample of adolescents from the TRacking Adolescents Individual Lives' Survey (TRAILS). The vulnerability model argues that particular temperaments can place individuals at risk for the development of mental health problems. Importantly, the model may imply that ...

The current study tested 2 models of inhibition in 45 children with language impairment and 45 children with normally developing language; children were aged 7 to 12 years. Of interest was whether a model of inhibition as a mental-control process (i.e., executive function) or as a mental resource would more accurately reflect the relations among mental-attentional (M) capacity, inhibition, upda...

The sustainable management of natural resources largely depends on people’s conceptions of environmental systems and how they function. The mental model construct provides an appropriate means to explore the cognitive dimension of people’s interactions with such systems. Mental models are cognitive representations of external reality that people use as the basis for acting with and within the w...

This paper focuses on the impact of users’ mental model for the performance when interacting with mobile devices. Investigating the interrelation between the quality of the mental model and the performance, users had to accomplish standard applications with cell phones (study 1) and a PDA (study 2). Navigation routes were individually analyzed and the respective effectiveness and efficiency of ...

ZHANG, TAO. Using Measures of Situation Awareness to Characterize Mental Models in Inductive Reasoning Tasks. (Under the direction of Dr. David B. Kaber.) Mental models have been proposed in both the cognitive psychology and human factors literature. However, they have been applied for a variety of related but distinct representations. For system design and user training in practical applicatio...