Mental Models Research Articles

Molded by the Ghost: How Physicians Use–and Cease Using–Predictive AI to Learn a Mental Model

Molded by the Ghost: How Physicians Use–and Cease Using–Predictive AI to Learn a Mental Model

A Population Health Approach: An Organizational Case Study of Mental Models Among Hospital Leaders

A Population Health Approach: An Organizational Case Study of Mental Models Among Hospital Leaders

News bylines and perceived AI authorship: Effects on source and message credibility

With emerging abilities to generate content, artificial intelligence (AI) poses a challenge to identifying authorship of news content. This study focuses on source and message credibility evaluation as AI becomes incorporated into journalistic practices. An experiment (N = 269) explored the effects of news bylines and AI authorship on readers’ perceptions. The findings showed that perceived AI contribution, rather than the labeling of the AI role, predicted readers’ perceptions of the source and the content. When readers thought AI contributed more to a news article, they indicated lower message credibility and source credibility perceptions. Humanness perceptions fully mediated the relationships between perceived AI contribution and perceived message credibility and source credibility. This study yielded theoretical implications for understanding readers’ mental model of machine sourceness and practical implications for newsrooms toward ethical AI in news automation and production.

Enhancing Healthcare Accountability for Administrators: Fostering Transparency for Patient Safety and Quality Enhancement.

Transparency in healthcare organizations is essential for creating a culture of patient-centered care where patients are respected, informed, and actively engaged in their health and well-being. Organizational transparency is a crucial element in healthcare, enhancing patient safety and quality improvement. Transparency involves open communication about healthcare organizations' performance, outcomes, and processes, leading to improved accountability, trust, and patient engagement. Transparent organizations prioritize patient-centered care, involving patients in decision-making and fostering shared mental models between healthcare providers and patients. Psychological safety is vital for organizational transparency. Patient safety reporting systems play a key role in transparency, allowing anonymous reporting of safety concerns and incidents. These systems facilitate early risk identification, continuous improvement, and compliance with regulatory requirements. Transparency in reporting encourages a culture of openness, learning from near misses, and addressing systemic issues and human errors. It aligns with ethical principles, potentially mitigating legal challenges. This review synthesizes key themes, including the importance of patient-centered care, the role of psychological safety in fostering transparency, and the effectiveness of patient safety reporting systems.

New tools for learning airway management

INTRODUCTION Game-based learning, also called edutainment, has been promoted as an alternative to the unidirectional, passive teaching of traditional medical education. Solving enigmas and problems through creativity and critical thinking, which is encapsulated in ‘escape rooms’, has been adapted to teach medicine as a way to enhance the mental models of proceeding. We considered an educational escape room as an activity to promote teaching and training in airway management, integrating knowledge, technical and nontechnical skills and collaborative teamwork during crisis situations. METHODS No published experience on this topic was found. Therefore, we created an educational escape room focused on airway management. We describe the steps undertaken from the design and development of the escape room process (as part of the curriculum of an international airway course) to the results of a survey completed by the participants at the end of the escape room process. RESULTS Satisfaction with the experience was rated at least 8 points (0 to 10 numerical rating scale) by 80% of the 147 course participants. Two thirds also rated the experience as at least 8 points (0 to 10 Likert scale) as being helpful in improving behaviour in real cases, and enhance organisational teamwork skills. CONCLUSION The airway escape room was feasible for training in airway management. Participants rated it as valuable to gain team competencies. The experience encourages further development and its possible use in other clinical settings.

EXTERNALIZATION OF TACIT KNOWLEDGE IN THE MENTAL MODEL OF A USER OF AN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SYSTEM

The subject of the study is the processes of forming the user's mental model in artificial intelligence systems. The construction of such a model is associated with solving the problem of opacity and incomprehensibility of the decision-making process in such systems for end users. To solve this problem, the system user needs to receive an explanation of the obtained decision. The explanation should take into account the user's perception of the decision and the decision-making process, which is formalized within the user's mental model. The mental model considers the user's use of explicit and implicit knowledge, the latter of which usually lacks formal representation. The externalization of such knowledge ensures its transformation into a formal form. The aim of the work is to develop an approach to the externalization of implicit knowledge based on identifying patterns and causal dependencies for the decision-making process in an intelligent system when constructing the user's mental model. To achieve this goal, the following tasks are solved: developing a user's mental model of an artificial intelligence system that takes into account both explicit and implicit knowledge and developing an approach to the externalization of implicit knowledge of the user of the artificial intelligence system. A user's mental model of an artificial intelligence system that accounts for both explicit and implicit knowledge of the user is proposed. The model considers the connections between the user's explicit and implicit knowledge regarding the artificial intelligence system, the decision-making process, the method of using the decisions, and the general concept of the intelligent system. This creates conditions for the externalization of the user's implicit knowledge and the subsequent use of this knowledge in forming explanations regarding the decision-making process in the artificial intelligence system. An approach to the externalization of knowledge from the statistical and semantic layers of the user's mental model is proposed. In practical terms, the approach makes it possible to translate into explicit form the conditions and constraints regarding the formation and use of decisions in the artificial intelligence system.

Using Mental Modeling to Study the Management of Used Cooking Oil in Kuala Nerus

Recycling of used cooking oil is an effort by collecting, processing and reusing solid waste or materials that have been used for the purpose of environmental conservation. This study was conducted to identify the level of knowledge and awareness of used cooking oil management among the community in the Kuala Nerus district, Terengganu. The study involved 30 respondents in the community, namely traders, used cooking oil wholesalers, households, students and the government. The study used a mixed method, i.e. qualitative and quantitative research using fuzzy cognitive modelling including individual mental model modeling. The results of the study showed that the knowledge of cooking oil waste recycling among the respondents was still at a moderate level. The results of the study found that for the aspect of qualitative analysis, there were four themes that emerged, namely knowledge, awareness, attitude and culture. While descriptive analysis identifies the most dominant relationship strength is the theme of awareness. The recommendations in this study are necessary to improve the management of used cooking oil in Kuala Nerus through a comprehensive and integrated approach. This study proposes a legal approach, encourages the expansion of this study to a higher level and improves the provision of used cooking oil management infrastructure.

Systemic features of the formation of mental models behavior of people in socio-economic relations

The article substantiates the thesis that management of human behavior is the management of each person behavior. In turn, each person behavior depends on the individual mental model formed in his mind. It is shown that the existence of public institutions as rules of conduct and the enforcement of their execution is a systemic necessity and they are established on the basis of values and goals of those people who establish them. The article proposes a hierarchy of behavior attributes in an individual mental model that defines human behavior. It is shown that behavior style of each person is the result of a constant comparison of rules and goals of society development with individual goals. Man as a system strives for stability and self-preservation. The set of values formed in an individual mental model determines the parameters of sustainability and self-preservation in the form of a set of needs, a range of benefits and ways to obtain them. The successful development of the system is possible only with the joint directed development of each system element. It is shown that the systemic goal of socio-economic relations is to increase well-being of each person as a creator of goods and his household, as well as the comprehensive development of each person as a member of society. The systemic need for management consists in forming a set of values based on these goals, which means a set of needs, and changing the rules for the creation, distribution and exchange of goods corresponding to these goals. It is shown that only in this case the common goals underlying the formation of an individual mental model will coincide with the goals of human development as a system and ensure harmonious behavior of people. Otherwise, people use public conformity for self-preservation and stability, or nonconformism as a style of behavior aimed at realizing values in an individual mental model.

Usability Testing Via Simulation: Optimizing the NEAR4PEM Preintubation Checklist With a Human Factors Approach.

To inform development of a preintubation checklist for pediatric emergency departments via multicenter usability testing of a prototype checklist. This was a prospective, mixed methods study across 7 sites in the National Emergency Airway Registry for Pediatric Emergency Medicine (NEAR4PEM) collaborative. Pediatric emergency medicine attending physicians and senior fellows at each site were first oriented to a checklist prototype, including content previously identified using a modified Delphi approach. Each site used the checklist in 2 simulated cases: an "easy airway" and a "difficult airway" scenario. Facilitators recorded verbalization, completion, and timing of checklist items. After each simulation, participants completed an anonymous usability survey. Structured debriefings were used to gather additional feedback on checklist usability. Comments from the surveys and debriefing were qualitatively analyzed using a framework approach. Responses informed human factors-based optimization of the checklist. Fifty-five pediatric emergency medicine physicians/fellows (4-13 per site) participated. Participants found the prototype checklist to be helpful, easy to use, clear, and of appropriate length. During the simulations, 93% of checklist items were verbalized and more than 80% were completed. Median time to checklist completion was 6.2 minutes (interquartile range, 4.8-7.1) for the first scenario and 4.2 minutes (interquartile range, 2.7-5.8) for the second. Survey and debriefing data identified the following strengths: facilitating a shared mental model, cognitively offloading the team leader, and prompting contingency planning. Suggestions for checklist improvement included clarifying specific items, providing more detailed prompts, and allowing institution-specific customization. Integration of these data with human factors heuristic inspection resulted in a final checklist. Simulation-based, human factors usability testing of the National Emergency Airway Registry for Pediatric Emergency Medicine Preintubation Checklist allowed optimization prior to clinical implementation. Next steps involve integration into real-world settings utilizing rigorous implementation science strategies, with concurrent evaluation of the impact on patient outcomes and safety.

Assessing the Mental Model State of Emergency Responders in the Context of Radiological Dispersal Device (RDD) Incidents: A Multi-state Study.

Hazardous Materials (HAZMAT) Technicians' notions of mental model, or cognitive representations of their understanding and beliefs regarding Radiological Dispersal Devices (RDDs) incidents, have not been previously explored. A prior study developed an Expected Mental Model State (EMMS) framework specific to RDD incident response for HAZMAT technicians. The work herein presents the development of a derivative of this framework, the EMMS Diagnostic Matrix, to evaluate the actual Mental Model State (MMS) of HAZMAT technicians in the context of RDD incidents. The EMMS Diagnostic Matrix was administered via a survey and simulation activity in four U.S. states representing the Northeast, West, South, and Midwest regions. Data were collected and coded using grounded theory methodology. Reflexive thematic analysis was employed to identify themes across related areas where the notions of mental model for the HAZMAT technician responders' actual MMS differed from the EMMS. The analysis of the collected data revealed four significant themes representing incomplete notions of the mental model spanning various EMMS conceptual domains: Overestimation of Radiation Dose and Health Effects, indicating misunderstandings about the health impacts of radiation exposure, Acute Radiation Syndrome (ARS), particularly in the lower range of radiation doses; Overreliance on Responder Protection [personal protective equipment (PPE)/self-contained breathing apparatus (SCBA)], highlighting gaps in understanding radiation principles and radioactive material dispersal properties from a radiological dispersal device; Misunderstanding Radiation Detection and Units, signifying confusion about radiation units and differentiation between dose rate and accumulated dose; and Incomplete Understanding of Radiation Characteristics and Dispersal Properties, outlining a limited grasp of inhalation risks from radiation and the dispersal traits of a radiological dispersal device. The interconnectedness of these technical misunderstandings can guide the development of a strategic plan to evaluate and modify existing training, aiming at these specific themes to improve the efficiency of HAZMAT technicians in emergency situations and to identify areas for further research.

Structures and Processes of Grading Committees in Internal Medicine Clerkships: Results of a National Survey.

Clerkship grades are important in the residency selection process but can be influenced by individual bias and grading tendencies. Although clinical competency committees are standard in graduate medical education, in undergraduate medical education, they have not gained widespread traction. This study describes structures and processes of grading committees in internal medicine (IM) clerkships and strategies used to mitigate grading bias. From September to December 2022, the Clerkship Directors in Internal Medicine conducted its annual survey of IM core clerkship directors at 140 U.S. and U.S. territory-based medical schools. This study was based on 23 questions about grading committees in IM clerkships. The survey response rate was 80% (n = 112/140). Forty-seven respondents (42%) reported using grading committees in their IM clerkship (median committee size, 7; range, 3-20) (primarily clerkship leadership and faculty). Responsibilities included determining grades for all students (31 [66%]) and students at borderline of failing (30 [64%]), adjudicating on students with professionalism concerns (25 [53%]), and reconciling discordant clinical evaluations (24 [51%]). To mitigate deliberation bias, committees most frequently used multisource assessments (38 [81%]) and adoption of a shared mental model (36 [77%]). Approximately one-third of grading committees "rarely" discussed gender (14 [30%]) and race or ethnicity (15 [32%]), and 7 committees (15%) "never" discussed gender and race or ethnicity. Clerkship directors perceived developing a shared mental model (60 [92%]), promoting consistency (59 [91%]) and transparency (57 [88%]) in the process, mitigating assessment bias (58 [89%]), improving student satisfaction (54 [83%]), and sharing grading responsibility (44 [68%]) as potential benefits. This study found that grading committees in IM clerkships are not widely used and that existing committees vary in structure and process. These findings highlight an opportunity for medical schools to consider using grading committees to improve grade assignment and address grading inconsistencies.

Innovative outpatient treatment for veterans and service members and their family members.

In 2009, Massachusetts General Hospital and the Red Sox Foundation launched Home Base, a nonprofit dedicated to providing care to veterans, service members, and their loved ones who struggle with the invisible wounds of war free of charge. Significant needs exist for mental health services in each of these populations, and a need for innovative approaches to address shortcomings in existing treatment models. Three inventive components of our programming are highlighted herein: a Veteran Outreach Team, which helps to engage patients in care, programming, and services specifically for family members, and an intensive outpatient substance use treatment program. More than 4,000 patients, 3,031 veterans and service members, and 1,025 family members have engaged in treatment at Home Base. Patients were asked to complete post-treatment self-measures, including a satisfaction questionnaire via an electronic data collection system. The vast majority of individuals who engaged in our treatment model were satisfied with the care they received (>92%) and would refer their peers to the Home Base program (>75%). Data from 78 individuals who completed the dual diagnosis services demonstrated large effect sizes in reductions in alcohol use and comorbid mental health symptoms. These data suggest that novel components to the standard outpatient mental health model might provide substantive benefits for the patients served. While internal data is prone to a lack of generalizability, these additional offerings help ameliorate patients' expressed shortcomings with existing models; present literature that describes the benefits that these additions provide is also reviewed. The lessons learned and limitations are discussed.

The effects of self-questioning on additive word problem solving

This study underscores the critical role of mental representation and advanced reading comprehension in solving mathematical word problems. Proficient problem solvers create nuanced mental models of problem situations, while less successful ones rely on simpler translations. Advanced reading comprehension aids in navigating the complexity of word problems, including element sequencing and semantic relations. The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of a self-questioning strategy on four elementary students’ comprehension of additive problems. These students were trained to ask questions that helped uncover semantic relations in problems. Results showed significant improvement in their ability to interpret these relations and apply the self-questioning method to comprehend two-step additive problems.

Construction of a mental health risk model for college students with long and short-term memory networks and early warning indicators

Abstract With the increasing social pressure and academic competition, the mental health (for convenience, abbreviated as MH) problems of college students are becoming increasingly prominent, but there are often challenges that are difficult to accurately predict and intervene in a timely manner. The aim of this article is to address the early warning needs of college students’ MH problems and construct a model that can timely identify the MH problems of college students. The experiment collected MH related data from college students in S city, and analyzed and trained these data using the Long short-term memory (LSTM) network model. By changing the number of hidden layers, learning rate, batch size, and epoch times, the most suitable training effect was achieved. By using the time-series characteristics of the LSTM model, the selected parameters from the experiment can better capture the changing trends of college students’ MH status, thereby improving prediction accuracy. Finally, three stage indicators of low, medium, and high were set up for early warning of the predicted results, in order to effectively and timely take measures. The research results indicated that the constructed model achieved a minimum regularization loss of 0.0674 after training. Finally, the adjusted model was used to predict the test set, with an average accuracy of 0.852 and an average accuracy of 0.906. The LSTM-based MH risk model performed well in predicting college students’ MH problems and could identify potential risk factors in a timely manner.

Neurophysiological evidence for the overview effect: a virtual reality journey into space

The Overview Effect is a complex experience reported by astronauts after viewing Earth from space. Numerous accounts suggest that it leads to increased interconnectedness to other human beings and environmental awareness, comparable to self-transcendence. It can cause fundamental changes in mental models of the world, improved well-being, and stronger appreciation of, and responsibility for Earth. From a cognitive perspective, it is closely linked to the emotion of awe, possibly triggered by the overwhelming perceived vastness of the universe. Given that most research in the domain focuses on self-reports, little is known about potential neurophysiological markers of the Overview Effect. In the experiment reported here, participants viewed an immersive Virtual Reality simulation of a space journey while their brain activity was recorded using electroencephalography (EEG). Post-experimental self-reports confirmed they were able to experience the Overview Effect in the simulated environment. EEG recordings revealed lower spectral power in beta and gamma frequency bands during the defining moments of the Overview Effect. The decrease in spectral power can be associated with reduced mental processing, and a disruption of known mental structures in this context, thereby providing more evidence for the cognitive effects of the experience.

A mentally healthy framework to guide employers and policy makers.

Mental health problems among the working population represent a growing concern with huge impacts on individuals, organizations, compensation authorities, and social welfare systems. The workplace presents both psychosocial risks and unique opportunities for intervention. Although there has been rapid expansion of workplace mental health interventions over recent decades, clear direction around appropriate, evidence-based action remains limited. While numerous workplace mental health models have been proposed to guide intervention, general models often fail to adequately consider both the evidence base and where best-practice principles alone inform action. Further, recommendations need to be updated as new discoveries occur. We seek to update the Framework for Mentally Healthy Workplaces based on new evidence of intervention effectiveness while also incorporating evidence-based principles. The updated model also integrates concepts from existing alternate models to present a comprehensive overview of strategies designed to enhance wellbeing, minimize harm, and facilitate recovery. Examples of available evidence and obstacles to implementation are discussed. The Framework is designed to support employers and managers in determining which strategies to apply and to guide future avenues of research.

Имплицитное понимание неверных мнений: современное состояние исследований

<p style="text-align: justify;">The article presents a review of a number of modern foreign studies of implicit false beliefs in young children with typical development, hearing impairments, autism spectrum disorders, and primates. The results of studies performed using different methodological paradigms for assessing early development of mental models: violation of expectations and anticipatory looking are analyzed. The results of research on the search for the biological basis of the origins of social cognition using functional near-infrared spectroscopy are presented, as well as the results of research on the relationship between possible predictors of theory of mind (understanding the purpose of another's actions, joint attention, implicit false beliefs) and the success of social cognition in preschool age under typical development. Theoretical conceptualizations of two theory of mind systems are described: the minimal one and the theory of mind. Immediate prospects for future research to resolve existing replication crises and prevent new ones are outlined.</p>

Planning with mental models – Balancing explanations and explicability

Human-aware planning involves generating plans that are explicable, i.e. conform to user expectations, as well as providing explanations when such plans cannot be found. In this paper, we bring these two concepts together and show how an agent can achieve a trade-off between these two competing characteristics of a plan. To achieve this, we conceive a first-of-its-kind planner MEGA that can reason about the possibility of explaining a plan in the plan generation process itself. We will also explore how solutions to such problems can be expressed as “self-explaining plans” – and show how this representation allows us to leverage classical planning compilations of epistemic planning to reason about this trade-off at plan generation time without having to incur the computational burden of having to search in the space of differences between the agent model and the mental model of the human in the loop in order to come up with the optimal trade-off. We will illustrate these concepts in two well-known planning domains, as well as with a robot in a typical search and reconnaissance task. Human factor studies in the latter highlight the usefulness of the proposed approach.

Team member familiarity and team effectiveness in the operating room: The mediating effect of mutual trust and shared mental models

BackgroundTeamwork in the operating room is of paramount importance to provide high-quality patient care. It has been shown that increased team member familiarity predicts improved teamwork. A complicating factor is the often-changing composition of the operating room teams. Team member familiarity is associated with shared mental models and mutual trust, which are in turn important factors for team effectiveness. However, it remains unclear how this interplay takes place and can be influenced (eg, through team training). Our aim was to investigate the relationship between team member familiarity and perceived team effectiveness in operating room teams. We hypothesized that shared mental models and mutual trust mediate this relationship. MethodsWe performed a prospective, correlational study in 2 hospitals in the Netherlands. A questionnaire was used to assess team member familiarity, mutual trust, shared mental models (perceived and content-related), and perceived team effectiveness. Data were analyzed using a random intercept multilevel model. ResultsTeam member familiarity significantly predicted perceived team effectiveness, both through a direct effect, as well as mediated by perceived shared mental models. Mutual trust also significantly predicted team effectiveness. Variance is determined mostly at an individual level, but also partly (12%) at the operating room level. ConclusionGreater team member familiarity predicts greater team effectiveness, and this relationship is mediated by shared mental models. Training should be aimed at these aspects of team functioning to optimize team performance in the operating room.

Reasoning about possibilities: Modal logics, possible worlds, and mental models.

Everyone reasons about possibilities. This article explains how they could do so using mental models. The theory makes four major claims: 1. Correct inferences are necessary, referring only to facts or possibilities to which the premises refer and not ruling any of them out, for example: She left or hid; Therefore, it's possible that she left and possible that she hid. 2. A possibility such as that she hid, which is represented in an intuitive model, presupposes the possibility that it did not occur, she did not hide, which, if reasoners deliberate, is represented in the resulting model. 3. Reasoners condense consistent possibilities, such as the earlier pair, into one possibility: it is possible that she left and she hid. 4. Inconsistencies, such as she left or hid, and she neither left nor hid, refer to no possibilities whatsoever - they have an empty model - and so their only effects are local. Hence, any inference can be withdrawn with impunity if there is knowledge to the contrary. Experiments have corroborated each of these principles. They are incompatible with four essentials of standard modal logics, which concern deductions based on "possible" or "necessary". Their formal deductions correspond to valid inferences, which have no counterexamples in which the premises are true but the conclusion is false. And so the article examines the differences between the two approaches, and explores the adaptation of a modal logic to account for correct human reasoning. Its feasibility is an open question.