ABSTRACT
The processed and stylized worlds we create and manipulate in our minds are composed of mental representations, knowledge simplified and abstracted as symbols, and structured in such a way as to facilitate the pursuit of goals and plans in a complex and dynamic environment. Representations are the means by which we think and behave intelligently, and so are fundamental to our understanding of the way the mind works (McNamara, 1994; Thagard, 1996). Expressing this principle cogently, Dalenoort (1990) observed that, “The nature of representations is of fundamental importance for the way we view and understand the world. It may be expressed more strongly: our representations are our view of the world” (p. 233). Johnson-Laird (1983) affirmed the precept: “Human beings, of course, do not apprehend the world directly; they possess only an internal representation of it, because perception is the construction of a model of the world. They are unable to compare this perceptual representation directly with the world—it is their world” (p. 156).
