Abstract
Educators have long been concerned with the difficulties faced by students when it comes to applying their knowledge to contents and contexts different from those of the original learning (i.e., the “problem of inert knowledge”). However, only since the 1980s a number of psychological investigations started to unveil the causes of these transfer difficulties. Chapter 2 reviews the parallel results of two experimental traditions in the study of analogical retrieval: studies of analogical problem-solving and cued-recall experiments of story reminding. Both threads of studies document the pervasive role of surface similarities in analogical retrieval: source analogs (i.e., stored situations whose deep structure is isomorphic to the situation being currently processed) are seldom retrieved when their individual elements are not semantically similar to those of the target situation. The chapter goes on to illustrate how the observed centrality of surface-level similarities has inspired the dominant computer simulations to date, as well as to advance some conjectures about the adaptive advantage of retrieving “literally” similar episodes during the Pleistocene’s environment.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Needless to say, participants could have treated the experimenters’ intrusion quite differently from the sudden reminding that spontaneously pops up in their mind. While the former could legitimately be interpreted as an unrelated interruption, the latter may be interpreted as bearing some meaningful connection to the target episode being processed.
References
Anoli, L., Antonietti, A., Crisafulli, L., & Cantoia, M. (2001). Accessing source information in analogical problem-solving. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 54, 237–261.
Barnett, S. M., & Ceci, S. J. (2002). When and where do we apply what we learn? A taxonomy for far transfer. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 128, 612–637.
Day, S. B., & Goldstone, R. L. (2012). The import of knowledge export: Connecting findings and theories of transfer of learning. Educational Psychologist, 47, 153–176.
Duncker, K. (1945). On problem solving. Psychological Monographs, 58, 270.
Forbus, K., Gentner, D., & Law, K. (1995). MAC/FAC: A model of similarity-based retrieval. Cognitive Science, 19, 141–204.
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.
Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 306–355.
Hummel, J. E., & Holyoak, K. J. (1997). Distributed representations of structure: A theory of analogical access and mapping. Psychological Review, 104, 427–466.
Keane, M. T. (1987). On retrieving analogues when solving problems. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39, 29–41.
Newell, A., & Simon, H. A. (1972). Human problem solving. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Raynal, L., Clement, E., & Sander, E. (2017). Challenging the superficial similarities superiority account for analogical retrieval. In G. Gunzelmann, A. Howes, T. Tenbrink, & E. Davelaar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 39th annual conference of the cognitive science society (pp. 2957–2962). Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Reed, S. K., Ernst, G. W., & Banerji, R. (1974). The role of analogy in transfer between similar problem states. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 436–450.
Ripoll, T. (1998). Why this makes me think of that. Thinking and Reasoning, 4, 15–43.
Spencer, R. M., & Weisberg, R. W. (1986). Context-dependent effects on analogical transfer. Memory & Cognition, 14, 442–449.
Thagard, P., Holyoak, K., Nelson, G., & Gochfeld, D. (1990). Analog retrieval by constraint satisfaction. Artificial Intelligence, 46, 259–310.
Wharton, C. M., Holyoak, K. J., & Lange, T. E. (1996). Remote analogical reminding. Memory & Cognition, 24, 629–643.
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). The Experimental Tradition. In: Distant Connections: The Memory Basis of Creative Analogy. SpringerBriefs in Psychology(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52545-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52545-3_2
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)