ABSTRACT
A mental model is defined as “a structural analogue of a real-world or imaginary situation, event, or process that the mind constructs during reasoning” (Nersessian, 2008). Mental models are “private and personal cognitive” representations formed by individuals or groups psychologically (Gilbert, 2001). People psychologically form a variety of mental models involving their surrounding environments. Mental models also may result from the process of communicating. For example, when disseminating a public service announcement informing the public of an Amber alert, the receiver of the message may hear or see a description of the missing child. On the basis of the communicated descriptive attributes, one may interpret the received description to imagine what the missing child looks like. This imagining of the missing child is representative of the formation of a mental model in the mind of the receiver of the message.
