Abstract
This introductory chapter begins by showcasing the role of analogies in cognitively relevant activities as diverse as problem-solving, prediction, hypothesis generation, comprehension of abstract concepts, instruction, persuasion, product development, scientific discovery, and creativity in general. Next we relate modern analogy research to the aims and methods of the computational-representational approach to cognition and expose the propositional formalisms developed by cognitive science to deal with the type of structured representations that typically take part in analogical comparisons. Taking advantage of this representational language, we proceed to distinguish analogies from other relevant forms of similarity, such as attribute matches, relation matches, or literal similes, as well as to specify the psychological constraints involved in the core analogical subprocesses of mapping and inference generation. After reviewing central findings regarding the production and interpretation of analogies, the chapter concludes by describing a representative example of how the central subprocesses of mapping and inference have been computationally simulated.
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Notes
- 1.
Functions map one or more entities into another entity or constant. For example, velocity (car) maps the physical object car into the quantity which describes its velocity. Structure-mapping allows substitution of functions to acknowledge their role as an indirect way of referring to entities. All other predicates must be matched identically.
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Trench, M., Minervino, R.A. (2020). Introduction. In: Distant Connections: The Memory Basis of Creative Analogy. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52545-3_1
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