Mental Models in Social Interaction

ABSTRACT. In this study, the authors introduce a new way to analyze cognitive change during social interactions, based on the mental model theory of reasoning. From this approach, cognitive performance can be improved for solving problems that require multiple models when participants in a social interaction group maintain qualitatively different models of a problem. Four relational reasoning experiments are reported. In Experiment 1 with school-aged participants, the authors found better performance for the social interaction groups on a posttest. Experiment 2 with younger children, in which models had been induced, showed that when the models of participants in the social interaction group were different, there was better performance. However, these results did not generalize to the posttest. Experiments 3 and 4 provide additional support for the idea that maintaining qualitatively different models leads to better performance even when participants work alone in a self-interaction situation.