Mental Model

Kenneth Craik, a Scottish psychologist at the University of Cambridge, introduced the concept in his 1943 book The Nature of Explanation. Craik proposed that the mind builds small-scale working models of reality to anticipate events — an idea that anticipated cognitive science by decades. Tragically, Craik died in a cycling accident in 1945, just two years after publication. His framework was rediscovered and expanded by Philip Johnson-Laird, whose 1983 book Mental Models brought the term into mainstream cognitive psychology.