It has been emphasized that understanding mental models is critical in problem solving, design, and reasoning. It also has been claimed that grasping mental models is difficult because mental models likely depend on our knowledge and experience. We focused attention on the transfer of mental models because we assumed that transfer probably has some common cognitive characteristics. In this study, the transfer group (A-B) and the non-transfer group (B) were prepared. In the transfer group, participants operated product A and product B in turn. By contrast, participants in the non-transfer group operated product B first. Operational time for product B in both groups was compared to examine how well mental models were transferred. We found that reducing the number of operational procedures could trigger the positive transfer of mental models if the other operational procedures were congruent.

Key words: mental models, transfer, operational procedure