In this chapter, an overview of the wide variety of occurrences of mental models in the literature was discussed. They were classified according to two dimensions obtaining four categories of them: static-dynamic and world-mental, where static refers to mental models for static world states or for static mental states and dynamic refers to mental models for world processes or for mental processes. In addition, distinctions were made for what can be done by mental models: they can, for example, be (1) used for internal simulation, they can be (2) adapted, and these processes can be (3) controlled. This has led to a global three-level cognitive architecture covering these three ways of handling mental models. It has been pointed out that in this cognitive architecture reflection principles play an important role to define the interactions between the different levels. These can be modeled in more detail using the adaptive network-oriented modeling approach described in (Treur, 2016; Treur, 2020). Some more philosophically focused background for mental models and their modeling can be found in (Treur, 2021d) about neural correlates for mental models and (Treur, 2021e) about the emerging informational content of mental models.
