Deliberate Practice - Mental Representation

There is this article because, I think the tool of mental representation is very helpful for our professional development, so this article will introduce mental representation.

What are mental representations

Mental representation is a mental structure, I think it can be imagined as a pattern block one by one, to give a practical example, when you see a lot of dogs, you don't need to think carefully about what it is, you can understand that they are all Dog, this is a mental representation. From creatures to dogs, there can be many pattern blocks, one creature can be one, one dog can be, and there is a relationship between the two, so many pattern blocks are pieced together into a mental structure, so that when you see a dog , can correspond to this mental structure. The more powerful person, that is, the person who has a deeper understanding of the dog breed, can tell when he sees a dog whether it is a golden retriever, a Yorkshire terrier, or a different breed. Because, the memory of different breeds has become a new model block and formed a larger mental structure, so that he does not need to rethink when he sees the dog. Therefore, the mental representation is omnipresent, and it cannot be without it, otherwise human beings will not even have the basic ability to survive.

Mental representation can cultivate professional

As I just mentioned, mental representation is a mental structure that is pieced together through many pattern blocks, and because of this relationship, it is very helpful for professional development. Like learning guitar, you may not remember the chords at the beginning, but after a long period of training, one note will form a mental structure, so that you don’t need to think about what note the chord is to be played, so we are using mental representations all the time. , but the difference between those professionals is that the mental representations in their profession are developed more fully and comprehensively.

How to develop mental representations

I have introduced how mental representation cultivates professionalism. Next, I will talk about how I think mental representation is cultivated. first. It should start from one block by one. For example, taking doctors seeing a doctor as an example, because they understand various diseases, they can form a mental structure, so that they can efficiently judge what diseases the patient suffers from. Therefore, they rely on, constantly Knowing the cause, symptoms, etc. of each disease, and repeating the study, can cultivate professionalism. Let’s take another example. It’s like learning a language. Take Japanese as an example. At the beginning, it is very likely that you can only slowly think and recall each word one by one before you know what it is and how to read it, but when you understand the meaning of each word. The meaning and usage, even if you have never heard of this word, you can understand it by the composition of the pattern block. In fact, Chinese is like this. "Learning" you know that learning means comprehension and learning, and then learning means repetition, so you can roughly know the meaning of the word. Of course, some words may not be learned by you, or the two words cannot be put together, but you can recognize that this word is special.

So, the steps to develop mental representations are to divide a final goal into small pattern blocks, divide Japanese into sentences, words, characters, practice word by word, then words, and finally sentences, usually this process becomes easier and easier. .

my thoughts

In fact, after reading this concept of mental representation, I was quite surprised, because before that, I was living as usual, and I never thought that I could understand these things by relying on mental representation. Yes, but the author should not only want us to "understand it" but use it as a tool, which can be used as a beneficial tool when cultivating professionalism or deliberate practice.

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