Abstract
Two experiments investigated factors that influence the retrieval and use of analogies in problem solving, Experiment 1 demonstrated substantial spontaneous analogical transfer with a delay of several days between presentation of the source and target analogues. Experiment 2 examined the influence of different types of similarity between the analogues. A mechanism for retrieval of source analogues is proposed, based on summation of activation from features shared with a target problem. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that both structural features, which play a causal role in determining possible problem solutions, and salient surface features, which do not have a causal role, influence spontaneous selection of an analogue. Structural features, however, have a greater impact than do surface features on a problem solver’s ability to use an analogue once its relevance has been pointed out.
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This research was supported by National Science Foundation Grant BNS-82 16068 and Army Research Institute Contract MDA903-86-K0297 The first author held an NIMH Research Scientist Development Award, I-K02-MHOO3424l5. Early drafts of the paper were written while the first author was visiting the Psychology Department at Carnegie-Mellon University and the Learning Research and Development Center of the University of Pittsburgh. Patricia Cheng and Edward Smith provided useful comments on earlier drafts of the paper. A talk based on the paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, May 1986, in Chicago.
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Holyoak, K.J., Koh, K. Surface and structural similarity in analogical transfer. Memory & Cognition 15, 332–340 (1987). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197035
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03197035