Analogical Reasoning

1. Analogical Reasoning

2. What to do... • How do you decide what to buy? • Use your past experience. How do you figure out which experience is relevant?

3. Using prior knowledge • Use of prior knowledge is guided by similarity • That makes similarity an interesting thing to study. How can we study this process when we don’t know what is in someone’s head?

4. Studying pairs of items • Study perceptions of similarity when all information is available.

5. Contrast model • Tversky (1977) • Similarity increases with common features • Similarity decreases with common features • Had people list features of concepts • Had other people rate the similarity of concepts • Compared the feature lists • Found common and distinctive features • Similarity ratings were positively related to the number of common features • Similarity ratings were negatively related to the number of distinctive features.

6. Analogy • Often, things being compared are not very similar. • How are these similar?

7. Analogies preserve relations • The Atom and the Solar System have similar relations among their parts. • The attributes of the objects are not similar. • The nucleus is not hot • The planets are not small.

8. Structure mapping • Structured representations • Relations connect the things they relate • Items are placed in correspondence when they play the same role in a matching relational system

9. Analogical Inference • Can make inferences about target domain • Inferences based on correspondences between the base and target. • Allows us to learn from experience.

10. Types of similarity These principles hold for all different types of similarity.

11. Structural alignment • Markman & Gentner • Cross-mapping • Mapping task • Similarity rating • Mapping first • Object mapping • Similarity first • Relation mapping • Relational similarity is important, even in similarity

12. Commonalities and differences • What are the commonalities and differences? Commonalities Something being towed

13. Commonalities and differences • What are the commonalities and differences? Commonalities Alignable Differences Car vs. Boat being towed

14. Commonalities and differences • What are the commonalities and differences? Parking meter in top scene. Commonalities Alignable Differences Nonalignable Differences Comparisons focus on commonalities and alignable differences.

15. Focus on alignable differences • Gentner & Markman (1994) • Page with 40 word pairs • 20 highly similar, 20 highly dissimilar • List one difference for as many pairs as possible • More differences listed for similar pairs than dissimilar pairs. • Reflects that alignable differences are easier to find for similar pairs than for dissimilar pairs • Hotel-Motel • Magazine-Kitten

16. Similarity and cognition • Similarity enables us to use background knowledge • Recognize how a new case is like an old one. • Structure mapping/structural alignment • Relations are important in similarity comparisons • Commonalities + Alignable differences are key • Nonalignable differences are less important • Differences are easy to find for similar things • Structural alignment affects cognitive processing • Ongoing research suggests that alignable differences are important in many different cognitive processes.