ABSTRACT
In 1983, two influential books were published which both bore the title Mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983; Gentner & Stevens, 1983). As Rogers and Rutherford (1992) note, despite the shared theme, Johnson-Laird’s treatment of mental models is relatively general; whilst the various chapters in Gentner and Stevens’ collection concern specific examples. These examples focus on causality in such physical domains as heat (Wiser & Carey, 1983), electricity (Gentner & Gentner, 1983) and the motion of objects in free fall (McCloskey, 1983).
