Abstract

Although both bodies of constructivist theory were originally developed by psychologists, and deal with how individuals and sets of individuals understand and navigate their worlds, there has been surprisingly little mutual acknowledgement let alone cross-fertilization between Personal Construct Psychology (PCP) and mental models. This article introduces mental models to the readership in PCP. It suggests how mental models theory and methods can sit within PCP, and add to theory about construing. We argue that mental models involve a specific process of construing, whereby people create a cognitive representation of a situation and apply causal logic to anticipate events and outcomes. Since the authors’ interest is in people-environment relationships, the article illustrates elicitation methods derived for our own mental models research, as an expansion of options to enrich PCP. These are semi-structured interviews within or away from landscapes (including transect walks); drawing methods supported by discussion; and focus groups with computer-aided visualization.

摘要

尽管建构主义理论的两个体系最初都是由心理学家发展起来的，并且涉及个人和个体如何理解和驾驭他们的世界，但令人惊讶的是，相互承认很少，更不用说个人建构心理学 (PCP) 和心理模型之间的交叉施肥了。本文向 PCP 的读者介绍心智模型。它暗示了心智模型理论和方法如何可以放在 PCP 中，并添加到关于解释的理论中。我们认为，心智模型涉及一个特定的解释过程，人们通过这个过程创建一个情境的认知表征，并应用因果逻辑来预测事件和结果。由于作者的兴趣在于人与环境的关系，文章说明了为我们自己的心智模型研究而衍生的启发方法，作为丰富 PCP 的选择的扩展。这些是景观内或景观外的半结构化访谈（包括横断面步行）；讨论支持的绘图方法；和具有计算机辅助可视化的焦点小组。