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Is a mental model a representation of a structure?
Is a mental model structured?
These are crucial tests. If it turns out that a mental model fails on one of these counts, then we must say that the use of the phrase "mental model" is misleading in the contexts it usually occurs. If it does not represent a non-mental structure, or if it is not itself structured, then it cannot be used in the senses that it is commonly used; and if it is not a mental model as defined here, its use a descriptive and predictive aid is questionable and in any case rather more limited than is normally supposed
If it fails these tests, we can try to determine what in fact people do mean by the term. I suspect that it is shorthand for an amalgam of habits, subliminal and unconscious perceptions, and responses to external cues based on experience. There is no mental model.
If Norman’s affordances have merit, then the model of the door contains the idea of push or pull: ergo, it cannot be a purely visual image, but must have semantic constructs. This lends weight to the propositionalists.
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