ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how mental simulation can serve as an important source of power. Mental simulation is the process of consciously enacting a sequence of events. Mental simulation plays an important role in phenomena such as problem solving, judgment, decision making, and planning. The Recognition-Primed Decision model explains how people can make decisions without having to compare options. The chapter identifies some difficulties that can arise when people use mental simulation. Computer simulations offer an interesting case to consider, particularly as a contrast to mental simulation. In constructing a computer simulation, a developer identifies a key set of variables, links these together using a set of relationships, and initializes the variables to begin the simulation run. R. N. Shepard and J. Metzler and S. M. Kosslyn and J. R. Pomerantz summarized the literature on mental imagery, a phenomenon that is related to mental simulation. However, mental imagery research has been concerned with tasks such as attempts to rotate complex shapes.
