Operations on cognitive structures — their modeling on the basis of graph theory

Abstract

It is a central problem in cognitive psychology to identify basic components in processes of formation and transformation of internal representations. Operations on internal representations are essential in different fields of cognitive psychology, e. g. in text comprehension and text processing, problem solving, cognitive development, diagnostics, and differential psychology. Thus Kintsch and van Dijk (1978) and van Dijk and Kintsch (1983) identified cognitive operations for the generation of knowledge representations that are typical for processes in text comprehension and text processing, such as operations for generating hierarchies of propositions and for the formation of macro propositions. Parts of the approach of Kintsch and van Dijk could be specified by experimental results of Beyer (1986). Also the analyses of Schnotz, Ballstaedt, and Mandl (1981), Garrod and Sanford (1981), and Ehrlich (1982) are directed to the identification of general cognitive principles in this field. Schnotz (1988) investigated text comprehension as formation of mental models (Johnson-Laird, 1983). The papers of Rickheit (1991) and Strohner (1991) are based on the idea of mental model formation too. Thereby the question for the basic structure of mental models and for operations for its formation as well as the problem of an adequate formalization are of great importance.