Maria Schneller

Understanding AI: Mental Models, AI Literacy, and Inclusive Human–AI Interaction

Maria Schneller is a PhD student in Cognitive Science at the Psychology Department of the University of Graz. Her work focuses on how non-expert users understand artificial intelligence and how their mental representations of AI shape expectations, perceived capabilities, and interaction with these systems. She is particularly interested in translating knowledge about users’ understanding into inclusive, human-centered, and responsible AI design.

Her dissertation investigates how non-expert users understand and interact with artificial intelligence systems, and how these mental representations shape expectations, perceived capabilities, and engagement with AI. It combines empirical and conceptual work to address inclusive, human-centered, and responsible AI design by examining the needs of citizens from vulnerable groups for AI-enhanced civic participation, reviewing how laypeople perceive and misunderstand AI chatbots with particular attention to gaps in functional understanding and limitations in existing research, and analyzing how technical laypeople conceptualize systems such as ChatGPT.

The overarching aim is to ensure alignment between system properties, interface communication and users’ mental models, in order to improve accessibility, foster appropriate expectations and users’ ability to act, and contribute to a more equitable human–AI interaction.