One common explanation is the memory aid hypothesis: external representations help problem solving by augmenting the limited-capacity working memory with a much larger external memory storage [e.g.], [ 1], [2] [4].
More generally, it is consistent with evidence that the left hemisphere is involved in the maintenance of existing hypotheses and representations [18], [19], [20], [21], while the right hemisphere is associated with novelty and with updating hypotheses and representations [22], [23], [24], [25], [26].
With limited data, the model development process usually entails evaluating multiple competing mechanisms, hypotheses, and/or representations and usually only what worked best makes it to publication.
The three experiments carried out in the present study explicitly test the memory aid hypothesis of external representations: external representations serve as memory aids and improve task performance by means of expanding the limited capacity of working memory.
Here, we examined the hypothesis that iconic representations communicate emotional information more efficiently than their realistic counterparts.
Simulations provide the opportunity for stating and testing hypothesis and multiple representations of physical phenomena such as diagrams and graphs (Blake & Scanlon, 2007).
These findings support the hypothesis that iconic representations differ from realistic images in their ability to communicate specific information, including emotion, quickly and efficiently, and that this effect is driven by changes in low-level visual features in the stimuli.
Hence, the memory aid hypothesis of external representations should not be taken for granted.
These results are consistent with the hypothesis that conceptual representations are supported via an interconnected bilateral anterior temporal lobe network.
The insight in the dual interpretation of mathematical models are of course not new: The "knowledge representation hypothesis" [ 33] demands that any useful formal representation needs both: to play a formal role and to have an "external semantical attribution".
