Working memory limits are best defined in terms of the complexity of the relations that can be processed in parallel. Complexity is defined as the number of related dimensions or sources of variation. A unary relation has one argument and one source of variation; its argument can be instantiated in only one way at a time. A binary relation has two arguments, two sources of variation, and two instantiations, and so on. Dimensionality is related to the number of chunks, because (...) both attributes on dimensions and chunks are independent units of information of arbitrary size. Studies of working memory limits suggest that there is a soft limit corresponding to the parallel processing of one quaternary relation. More complex concepts are processed by or In segmentation, tasks are broken into components that do not exceed processing capacity and can be processed serially. In conceptual chunking, representations are to reduce their dimensionality and hence their processing load, but at the cost of making some relational information inaccessible. Neural net models of relational representations show that relations with more arguments have a higher computational cost that coincides with experimental findings on higher processing loads in humans. Relational complexity is related to processing load in reasoning and sentence comprehension and can distinguish between the capacities of higher species. The complexity of relations processed by children increases with age. Implications for neural net models and theories of cognition and cognitive development are discussed. (shrink)

A theory of conceptual development must specify the innate representational primitives, must characterize the ways in which the initial state differs from the adult state, and must characterize the processes through which one is transformed into the other. The Origin of Concepts (henceforth TOOC) defends three theses. With respect to the initial state, the innate stock of primitives is not limited to sensory, perceptual, or sensorimotor representations; rather, there are also innate conceptual representations. With respect to developmental change, conceptual development (...) consists of episodes of qualitative change, resulting in systems of representation that are more powerful than, and sometimes incommensurable with, those from which they are built. With respect to a learning mechanism that achieves conceptual discontinuity, I offer Quinian bootstrapping. TOOC concludes with a discussion of how an understanding of conceptual development constrains a theory of concepts. (shrink)

A number of theoretical positions in psychology—including variants of case‐based reasoning, instance‐based analogy, and connectionist models—maintain that abstract rules are not involved in human reasoning, or at best play a minor role. Other views hold that the use of abstract rules is a core aspect of human reasoning. We propose eight criteria for determining whether or not people use abstract rules in reasoning, and examine evidence relevant to each criterion for several rule systems. We argue that there is substantial evidence (...) that several different inferential rules, including modus ponens, contractual rules, causal rules, and the law of large numbers, are used in solving everyday problems. We discuss the implications for various theoretical positions and consider hybrid mechanisms that combine aspects of instance and rule models. (shrink)

Human cognition is striking in its brilliance and its adaptability. How do we get that way? How do we move from the nearly helpless state of infants to the cognitive proficiency that characterizes adults? In this paper I argue, first, that analogical ability is the key factor in our prodigious capacity, and, second, that possession of a symbol system is crucial to the full expression of analogical ability.

A central question in human development is how young children gain knowledge so fast. We propose that analogical generalization drives much of this early learning and allows children to generate new abstractions from experience. In this paper, we review evidence for analogical generalization in both children and adults. We discuss how analogical processes interact with the child's changing knowledge base to predict the course of learning, from conservative to domain-general understanding. This line of research leads to challenges to existing assumptions (...) about learning. It shows that it is not enough to consider the distribution of examples given to learners; one must consider the processes learners are applying; contrary to the general assumption, maximizing variability is not always the best route for maximizing generalization and transfer. (shrink)

Analogy and similarity are central phenomena in human cognition, involved in processes ranging from visual perception to conceptual change. To capture this centrality requires that a model of comparison must be able to integrate with other processes and handle the size and complexity of the representations required by the tasks being modeled. This paper describes extensions to Structure-Mapping Engine since its inception in 1986 that have increased its scope of operation. We first review the basic SME algorithm, describe psychological evidence (...) for SME as a process model, and summarize its role in simulating similarity-based retrieval and generalization. Then we describe five techniques now incorporated into the SME that have enabled it to tackle large-scale modeling tasks: Greedy merging rapidly constructs one or more best interpretations of a match in polynomial time: O); Incremental operation enables mappings to be extended as new information is retrieved or derived about the base or target, to model situations where information in a task is updated over time; Ubiquitous predicates model the varying degrees to which items may suggest alignment; Structural evaluation of analogical inferences models aspects of plausibility judgments; Match filters enable large-scale task models to communicate constraints to SME to influence the mapping process. We illustrate via examples from published studies how these enable it to capture a broader range of psychological phenomena than before. (shrink)

In this paper we present Drama, a distributed model of analogical mapping that integrates semantic and structural constraints on constructing analogies. Specifically, Drama uses holographic reduced representations (Plate, 1994), a distributed representation scheme, to model the effects of structure and meaning on human performance of analogical mapping. Drama is compared to three symbolic models of analogy (SME, Copycat, and ACME) and one partially distributed model (LISA). We describe Drama's performance on a number of example analogies and assess the model in (...) terms of neurological and psychological plausibility. We argue that Drama's successes are due largely to integrating structural and semantic constraints throughout the mapping process. We also claim that Drama is an existence proof of using distributed representations to model high‐level cognitive phenomena. (shrink)

The ability to reason by analogy is particularly important because it permits the extension of knowledge of a target domain by virtue of its similarity to a base domain via a process of analogical inference. The general procedure for analogical inference involves copying structure from the base to the target in which missing information is generated, and substitutions are made for items for which analogical correspondences have already been found. A pure copying with substitution and generation process is too profligate (...) to be useful, and so constraints must be placed on what information is to be carried over. In this paper, the importance of systematicity as a constraint on inference is explored in four studies in which subjects find correspondences between domains and also make inferences. This work suggests that people prefer to make inferences of information connected to systematic correspondences between domains. A second important theme of this paper is that violations of one‐to‐one mapping can lead to inconsistent object substitutions in inference. The data reveal no such inconsistent substitutions in people's inferences, suggesting that they do respect one‐to‐one mapping in analogical inference. These findings are discussed relative to four prominent computational models of analogical mapping and inference. (shrink)

We tested whether analogical training could help children learn a key principle of elementary engineering—namely, the use of a diagonal brace to stabilize a structure. The context for this learning was a construction activity at the Chicago Children's Museum, in which children and their families build a model skyscraper together. The results indicate that even a single brief analogical comparison can confer insight. The results also reveal conditions that support analogical learning.

This research addresses the kinds of matching elements that determine analogical relatedness and literal similarity. Despite theoretical agreement on the importance of relational match, the empirical evidence is neither systematic nor definitive. In 3 studies, participants performed online evaluations of relatedness of sentence pairs that varied in either the object or relational match. Results show a consistent focus on relational matches as the main determinant of analogical acceptance. In addition, analogy does not require strict overall identity of relational concepts. Semantically (...) overlapping but nonsynonymous relations were commonly accepted, but required more processing time. Finally, performance in a similarity rating task partly paralleled analogical acceptance; however, relatively more weight was given to object matches. Implications for psychological theories of analogy and similarity are addressed. (shrink)

We investigated the understanding of causal systems categories—categories defined by common causal structure rather than by common domain content—among college students. We asked students who were either novices or experts in the physical sciences to sort descriptions of real-world phenomena that varied in their causal structure (e.g., negative feedback vs. causal chain) and in their content domain (e.g., economics vs. biology). Our hypothesis was that there would be a shift from domain-based sorting to causal sorting with increasing expertise in the (...) relevant domains. This prediction was borne out: The novice groups sorted primarily by domain and the expert group sorted by causal category. These results suggest that science training facilitates insight about causal structures. (shrink)

The ability to make informative comparisons is central to human cognition. Comparison involves aligning two representations and placing their elements into correspondence. Detecting correspondences is a necessary component of analogical inference, recognition, categorization, schema formation, and similarity judgment. Connectionist Analogy Builder (CAB) determines correspondences through a simple iterative computation that matches elements in one representation with elements playing compatible roles in the other representation while simultaneously enforcing structural constraints. CAB shows promise as a process model of comparison as its performance (...) can be related to human performance (e.g., solution trajectory, error patterns, time‐on‐task). Furthermore, CAB's bounded working memory allows it to account for the inherent capacity limitations of human processing. CAB's strengths are its parsimony, transparency of operations, and ability to generate performance predictions. In this paper, CAB is evaluated against benchmark phenomena from the analogy literature. (shrink)

Many cognitive and evolutionary theories of religion argue that supernatural explanations are byproducts of our cognitive adaptations. An influential argument states that our supernatural explanations result from a tendency to generate anthropomorphic explanations, and that this tendency is a byproduct of an error management strategy because agents tend to be associated with especially high fitness costs. We propose instead that anthropomorphic and other supernatural explanations result as features of a broader toolkit of well-designed cognitive adaptations, which are designed for explaining (...) the abstract and causal structure of complex, unobservable, and uncertain phenomena that have substantial impacts on fitness. Specifically, we argue that (1) mental representations about the abstract vs. the supernatural are largely overlapping, if not identical, and (2) when the data-generating processes for scarce and ambiguous observations are complex and opaque, a naive observer can improve a bias-variance trade-off by starting with a simple, underspecified explanation that Western observers readily interpret as “supernatural.” We then argue that (3) in many cases, knowledge specialists across cultures offer pragmatic services that involve apparently supernatural explanations, and their clients are frequently willing to pay them in a market for useful and effective services. We propose that at least some ethnographic descriptions of religion might actually reflect ordinary and adaptive responses to novel problems such as illnesses and natural disasters, where knowledge specialists possess and apply the best available explanations about phenomena that would otherwise be completely mysterious and unpredictable. (shrink)

The development of analogical reasoning has traditionally been understood in terms of theories of adult competence. This approach emphasizes structured representations and structure mapping. In contrast, we argue that by taking a developmental perspective, analogical reasoning can be viewed as the product of a substantially different cognitive ability – relational priming. To illustrate this, we present a computational (here connectionist) account where analogy arises gradually as a by-product of pattern completion in a recurrent network. Initial exposure to a situation primes (...) a relation that can then be applied to a novel situation to make an analogy. Relations are represented as transformations between states. The network exhibits behaviors consistent with a broad range of key phenomena from the developmental literature, lending support to the appropriateness of this approach (using low-level cognitive mechanisms) for investigating a domain that has normally been the preserve of high-level models. Furthermore, we present an additional simulation that integrates the relational priming mechanism with deliberative controlled use of inhibition to demonstrate how the framework can be extended to complex analogical reasoning, such as the data from explicit mapping studies in the literature on adults. This account highlights how taking a developmental perspective constrains the theory construction and cognitive modeling processes in a way that differs substantially from that based purely on adult studies, and illustrates how a putative complex cognitive skill can emerge out of a simple mechanism. (shrink)

This paper proposes an account of natural analogy in scientific theorizing via Mary Hesse’s original understanding of analogical reasoning. Starting with discussing Hesse’s examples and her symbolic scheme, I argue that the traditional distinction between the type of formal analogy and the type of material analogy should be abandoned. All analogies in theorizing, that are both formal and material, contain a set of pretheoretic associations and a theoretic structure between two analogues. I thus provide a new interpretation of Hesse’s symbolic (...) scheme to reveal the pretheoretical and the structural dimensions of analogy and further illustrate the account of natural analogy by applying it to the history of the construction of Coulomb’s law, which is traditionally seen as a typical case of formal analogy, arguing that pretheoretic associations as well as a theoretic structure play a necessary role in this case. In the final part of this paper, I argue that the account of natural analogy is preferable to Dedre Gentner’s structural mapping theory. (shrink)

Work on analogy has been done from a number of disciplinary perspectives throughout the history of Western thought. This work is a multidisciplinary guide to theorizing about analogy. It contains 1,406 references, primarily to journal articles and monographs, and primarily to English language material. classical through to contemporary sources are included. The work is classified into eight different sections (with a number of subsections). A brief introduction to each section is provided. Keywords and key expressions of importance to research on (...) analogy are discussed in the introductory material. Electronic resources for conducting research on analogy are listed as well. (shrink)

The effect of state anxiety on analogical reasoning was investigated by examining qualitative differences in mapping performance between anxious and non-anxious individuals reasoning about pictorial analogies. The working-memory restriction theory of anxiety, coupled with theories of analogy that link complexity of mapping with working-memory capacity, predicts that high anxiety will impair the ability to find correspondences based on relations between multiple objects relative to correspondences based on overlap of attributes between individual objects. Anxiety was induced in one condition by a (...) stressful speeded subtraction task administered prior to the analogy task. Anxious participants produced fewer relational responses and more attribute responses than did non-anxious participants, both in the absence of explicit instructions to find relational mappings (Experiment 1) and after receiving such instructions (Experiment 2). The findings support the postulated links among anxiety, working memory, and the ability to perform complex analogical mapping. (shrink)

Theories of analogical reasoning have viewed relational structure as the dominant determinant of analogical mapping and inference, while assigning lesser importance to similarity between individual objects. An experiment is reported in which these two sources of constraints on analogy are placed in competition under conditions of high relational complexity. Results demonstrate equal importance for relational structure and object similarity, both in analogical mapping and in inference generation. The human data were successfully simulated using a computational analogy model (LISA) that treats (...) both relational correspondences and object similarity as soft constraints that operate within a limited-capacity working memory; but not with a model (SME) that treats relational structure as pre-eminent. (shrink)

This article describes the path‐mapping theory of how humans integrate analogical mapping and general problem solving. The theory posits that humans represent analogs with declarative roles, map analogs by lower‐level retrieval of analogous role paths, and coordinate mappings with higher‐level organizational knowledge. Implemented in the ACT‐R cognitive architecture, the path‐mapping theory enables models of analogical mapping behavior to incorporate and interface with other problem‐solving knowledge. Path‐mapping models thus can include task‐specific skills such as encoding analogs or generating responses, and can (...) make behavioral predictions at the level of real‐world metrics such as latency or correctness. We show that the path‐mapping theory can successfully account for the major phenomena addressed by previous theories of analogy. We also describe a path‐mapping model that can account for subjects' incremental eye‐movement and typing behavior in a story‐mapping task. We discuss extensions and implications of this work to other areas of analogy and problem‐solving research. (shrink)

Theory‐of‐mind (ToM) is an integral part of social cognition, but how it develops remains a critical question. There is evidence that children can gain insight into ToM through experience, including language training and explanatory interactions. But this still leaves open the question of how children gain these insights—what processes drive this learning? We propose that analogical comparison is a key mechanism in the development of ToM. In Experiment 1, children were shown true‐ and false‐belief scenarios and prompted to engage in (...) multiple comparisons (e.g., belief vs. world). In Experiments 2a, 2b, and 3, children saw a series of true‐ and false‐belief events, varying in order and in their alignability. Across these experiments, we found that providing support for comparing true‐ and false‐belief scenarios led to increased performance on false‐belief tests. These findings show that analogical comparison can support ToM learning. (shrink)

Recent theorizing about the nature of the cognitive impairment in autism suggests that autistic individuals display abnormally weak central coherence, the capacity to integrate information in order to make sense of one’s environment. Our article shows the relevance of computational models of coherence to the understanding of weak central coherence. Using a theory of coherence as constraint satisfaction, we show how weak coherence can be simulated ina a connectionist network that has unusually high inhibition compared to excitation. This connectionist model (...) simulates autistic behaviour on both the false belief task and the homograph task. (shrink)

Visual comparison is a key process in everyday learning and reasoning. Recent research has discovered the spatial alignment principle, based on the broader framework of structure‐mapping theory in comparison. According to the spatial alignment principle, visual comparison is more efficient when the figures being compared are arranged in direct placement—that is, juxtaposed with parallel structural axes. In this placement, (1) the intended relational correspondences are readily apparent, and (2) the influence of potential competing correspondences is minimized. There is evidence for (...) the spatial alignment principle in adults’ visual comparison (Matlen et al., 2020). Here, we test whether it holds for children. Six‐ and eight‐year‐old children performed a same‐different task over visual pairs. The results indicated that direct placement led to faster and more accurate comparison, both for concrete same‐different matches (matches of both objects and relations) and for purely relational matches—evidence that the same structural alignment process holds for visual comparison in 6‐ and 8‐year‐olds as in adults. These findings have implications for learning and education. (shrink)

There is a critical inconsistency in the literature on analogical retrieval. On the one hand, a vast set of laboratory studies has found that people often fail to retrieve past experiences that share deep relational commonalities, even when they would be useful for reasoning about a current problem. On the other hand, historical studies and naturalistic research show clear evidence of remindings based on deep relational commonalities. Here, we examine a possible explanation for this inconsistency—namely, that remindings based on relational (...) principles increase as a function of expertise. To test this claim, we devised a simple analogy‐generation task that can be administered across a wide range of expertise. We presented common events as the bases from which to generate analogies. Although the events themselves were unrelated to geoscience, we found that when the event was explainable in terms of a causal principle that is prominent in geoscience, expert geoscientists were likely to spontaneously produce analogies from geoscience that relied on the same principle. Further, for these examples, prompts to produce causal analogies increased their frequency among nonscientists and scientists from another domain, but not among expert geoscientists (whose spontaneous causal retrieval levels were already high). In contrast, when the example was best explained by a principle outside of geoscience, all groups required prompting to produce substantial numbers of analogies based on causal principles. Overall, this pattern suggests that the spontaneous use of causal principles is characteristic of experts. We suggest that expert scientists adopt habitual patterns of encoding according to the key relational principles in their domain, and that this contributes to their propensity to spontaneously retrieve relational matches. We discuss implications for the nature of expertise and for science instruction and assessment. (shrink)

(2013). Two facets of cognitive control in analogical mapping: The role of semantic interference resolution andgoal-driven structure selection. Thinking & Reasoning. ???aop.label???

Similarity is central for the definition of concepts in several theories in cognitive psychology. However, similarity encounters several problems which were emphasized by Goodman in 1972. At the end of his article, Goodman banishes similarity from any serious philosophical or scientific investigations. If Goodman is right, theories of concepts based on similarity encounter a huge problem and should be revised entirely. In this paper, we would like to analyze the notion of similarity with some insight from psychological works on analogical (...) cognition. Analogical cognition compares two situations or objects in order to find similarities between them. In doing so, the analogical process sorts the different features of the two situations or objects and determines the most important ones. The analogical process is also highly sensitive to context. Context-sensitivity is desirable at some level, but it is also problematic as it leads to a computational explosion. To answer this problem, we would like to consider salience as a possible heuristic in the analogical process. We will distinguish three forms of salience: Sensory, categorical, and operational. By taking salience into account, we can introduce a shortcut into the computation of similarity and circumvent computational explosion. (shrink)

A central goal of cognitive science is to develop a general theory of transfer to explain how people use and apply their prior knowledge to solve new problems. Previous work has identified multiple mechanisms of transfer including (but not limited to) analogy, knowledge compilation, and constraint violation. The central hypothesis investigated in the current work is that the particular profile of transfer processes activated for a given situation depends on both (a) the type of knowledge to be transferred and how (...) it is represented, and (b) the processing demands of the transfer task. This hypothesis was investigated in two laboratory training studies. The results from Experiment 1 show that each mechanism predicts specific behavioural patterns of performance across a common set of transfer tasks. The results from Experiment 2 show that people can adaptively shift between transfer mechanisms depending on their prior knowledge and the characteristics of the task environment. A framework for the development of a general theory of transfer based on multiple mechanisms is proposed and implications of the theory are discussed for measuring and understanding knowledge transfer. (shrink)