Definition of a Mental Model - Essay Example

Mental representation is very important during childhood as children during their developing stages tend to draw their self and other people's mental representations from constant interaction, both physical and emotional, with their mother or any other person in the role of their caretaker. Once the internal mental pictures are formed, the response patterns of children in social and personal interactions are affected by these mental representations. So a mental representation or picture is formed in the minds of children which at this stage is like wet clay and forms impressions very fast and if the impressions are not correct might negatively affect the child's future. Of what we see we unconsciously form representations in our mind and these pictures are functional and help us in our daily conceptions and problem-solving.

Development refers to the physiological, biological, and psychological development of a person from prenatal conditions to the end of adolescence. It is during this time that mental representations or mental pictures are formed by a person that frames his entire future life. Certain factors especially affect the early childhood period which has been explained in The ecological systems theory also referred to as development in context forwarded by Urie Bronfenbrenner(1979,1989,1993).

This model consists of four systems or nested environmental levels that assist in the interaction between a human being and his environment. These levels are the microsystem level (which consists of the person's immediate surroundings like family, school, care center, and neighborhood), the mesosystem-it comprises the interconnections between the various microsystems, and interpersonal relationships that spread across the various microsystems, ecosystem (an environmental setting that indirectly affects the child like the community structure where the child resides or maybe the parent's office culture) and the macro system which comprises of larger social economics context like government, national economic condition, socio-political culture, etc. Each system has its aspect, its power, and the role by which it can actively shape the child's development process out of which the microsystem is the most important in forming mental representation and development, as it forms the immediate surrounding of a child. A child from a socially lower strata family will experience more daily hardships when compared to a child from a wealthy family, whereas he will enjoy the benefits of having a large extended family which the latter will miss out on. It is mainly the parents and teachers who are pivotal in early childhood who form a large part of a child's mental representation and who act as, catalysts for a child's mental and emotional growth. So a person who is nearby to a child must be careful of his or her actions and try to be a role model to the child so that he or she forms a healthy and sound mental representation. Read More