Abstract
A wealth of experimental studies have demonstrated that analogous situations are seldom retrieved from memory when they do not share similar elements with the target situation being processed. More naturalistic observational studies, however, are revealing a profusion of distant analogies, thus suggesting that retrieval is not invariably constrained by superficial similarity. We begin by discussing previous attempts to explain out this inconsistency in terms of the alleged artificiality of experimental tasks and materials. Next, we review our own attempts to settle this debate by means of a hybrid paradigm that retains the ecological validity of naturalistic studies, but without sacrificing the methodological control of the experimental tradition. In line with traditional findings, our results demonstrate a strong effect of superficial similarity during the retrieval of naturally acquired situations as diverse as plots of popular movies, highly publicized political affairs, and different kinds of autobiographical episodes. We conclude by reassessing the debate about the adaptive nature of the surface bias in analogical retrieval, and discuss the implications of this diagnosis for alleviating the problem of inert knowledge.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
To some extent, the logic behind disregarding the bulk of analogies proposed by participants and simply concentrating the data analysis on the retrieval (or not) of this particular analog is somewhat reminiscent of techniques used in marine migration studies. As an example, consider the following questions: (1) Which is the likelihood that a mother whale that departed from California will make it to Alaska? and (2) How does it compare with the probabilities of a newborn whale? The success probabilities of mother whales can be compared to those of newborn whales without necessarily labeling all existing whales with satellite transmitters. It only requires taking the quotient between an arbitrary number of mother whales labeled in California and the subset of whales finally transmitting in Alaska, and comparing it to an analogous quotient corresponding to the newborn whales.
References
Blanchette, I., & Dunbar, K. (2000). How analogies are generated: The roles of structural and superficial similarity. Memory & Cognition, 28, 108–124.
Chen, Z., Mo, L., & Honomichl, R. (2004). Having the memory of an elephant: Long-term retrieval and use of analogues in problem solving. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 133, 415–433.
Dehghani, M., Gentner, D., Forbus, K., Ekhtiari, H., & Sachdeva, S. (2009). Analogy and moral decision making. In B. Kokinov, D. Gentner, & K. Holyoak (Eds.), New frontiers in analogy research (pp. 1–10). Sofia: NBU Press.
Dunbar, K. (2001). The analogical paradox: Why analogy is so easy in naturalistic settings, yet so difficult in the psychology laboratory? In D. Gentner, K. J. Holyoak, & B. Kokinov (Eds.), The analogical mind: Perspectives from cognitive science (pp. 313–334). Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Gentner, D. (1989). The mechanisms of analogical transfer. In S. Vosniadou & A. Ortony (Eds.), Similarity and analogical reasoning (pp. 199–242). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gentner, D., Rattermann, M. J., & Forbus, K. D. (1993). The roles of similarity in transfer: Separating retrievability from inferential soundness. Cognitive Psychology, 25, 431–467.
Hofstadter, D. R., & Sander, E. (2013). Surfaces and essences: Analogy as the fuel and fire of thinking. New York: Basic Books.
Keane, M. T. (1987). On retrieving analogues when solving problems. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39, 29–41.
Markman, A. B., Taylor, E., & Gentner, D. (2007). Auditory presentation leads to better analogical retrieval than written presentation. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 14, 1101–1106.
Medin, D. L., & Ross, B. H. (1989). The specific character of abstract thought: Categorization, problem-solving, and induction. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Advances in the psychology of human intelligence (Vol. 5, pp. 189–223). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Novick, L. R. (1988). Analogical transfer, problem similarity, and expertise. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 14, 510–520.
O’keefe, D., & Costello, F. (2008). A fast computational model of analogical retrieval (and mapping). In B. C. Love, K. McRae, & V. M. Sloutsky (Eds.), Proceedings of the 30th annual conference of the cognitive science society (pp. 2003–2008). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Olguin, V., Trench, M., & Minervino, R. (2020). Retrieving a distant analog from memory in daily life is very unlikely, even in optimal conditions of encoding. In S. Denison, M. Mack, Y. Xu, & B. Armstrong (Eds.), Proceedings of the 42 Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (pp. 2124–2130). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Osherson, D. N., Smith, E. E., Wilkie, O., López, A., & Shafir, E. (1990). Category-based induction. Psychological Review, 97, 185–200.
Raynal, L., Clement, E., & Sander, E. (2018). Structural similarity superiority in a free-recall reminding paradigm. In C. Kalish, M. Rau, J. Zhu, & T. Rogers (Eds.), Proceedings of the 40th annual conference of the cognitive science society (pp. 2324–2329). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Rips, L. (1975). Inductive judgments about natural categories. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 14, 665–681.
Trench, M., & Minervino, R. (2015). The role of surface similarity in analogical retrieval: Bridging the gap between the naturalistic and the experimental traditions. Cognitive Science, 39, 1292–1319.
Trench, M., Oberholzer, N., Adrover, J. F., & Minervino, R. (2009). La eficacia del paradigma de producción para promover la recuperación de análogos base interdominio. Psykhe, 18, 39–48.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Trench, M., Minervino, R.A. (2020). Bridging the Divide Between the Experimental and the Naturalistic Traditions. In: Distant Connections: The Memory Basis of Creative Analogy. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52545-3_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52545-3_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-52547-7
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-52545-3
eBook Packages: Behavioral Science and PsychologyBehavioral Science and Psychology (R0)