Are Superficially Dissimilar Analogs better retrieved than Superficially Similar Disanalogs?

Abstract

In the present study, we tested the assumption that structural similarity overcomes surface similarity in the retrieval of past events, by observing whether structural similarity alone is a better cue than surface similarity alone. To do so, in three story-recall experiments, we provided the participants with multiple source stories and then with a target cue story. This target cue only shared surface similarity with one source story, and structural similarity with another source story. In Experiment 1A, a Superficially Similar Disanalog source story (SSD) and a Superficially Dissimilar Analog source story (SDA) were presented among Superficially Dissimilar Disanalog source stories (SDDs). A soundness rating task was used in Experiment 1B to control the absence of structural similarity among the SSDs presented in Experiment 1A. In Experiment 2, the number of SSDs was increased in the aim to reproduce more ecological conditions. In Experiment 3, a filler task was introduced and supplementary source stories were presented in order to make the study more similar to previous story-recall paradigms. The results of the three story-recall experiments support the dominance of structural over surface similarities in analogical retrieval. The role of a structurally-based access regarding the retrieval of Superficially Similar Analogs (SSAs) and SDAs is discussed, as well as the factors underlying the rare occurrence of SDAs retrievals in previous experiments.

The role of surface and structural similarities in the retrieval of dynamic perceptually rich events.

“…According to Hofstadter and Sander (2013), everyone has extracted highly familiar abstract schemas from daily-life, enabling them to encode the structure of most incoming experiences and to retrieve past situations based on structural similarities. In line, Raynal et al (2020) argued that the superiority of surface similarities observed in Gentner et al (1993) could be attributed to the fact that the superficially similar stories used in this study systematically shared residual structural similarities, and demonstrated that superficially dissimilar analogs prevailed when this experimental bias was controlled. Overall, it appears that empirical research adopting the traditional experimental approach failed to reach a consensus regarding the respective role of surface and structural similarities in analogical retrieval.…”

“…This process is commonly divided into (at least) two subprocesses: the retrieval (also called reminding, access or recall) of a source situation from Long-Term Memory (LTM), and its mapping with the target cue situation once both representations are held in Working Memory (WM, Goldwater & Schalk, 2016;Holyoak, 2012;Gentner & Maravilla, 2018). While it is widely accepted that the systematic search for the relevant correspondences between two analogs during mapping generally leads to discovering their structural similarities (Markman & Gentner, 1993;Spellman & Holyoak, 1996), the type of similarities driving retrieval is still a controversial question in the current literature (Raynal et al, 2020;Olguín et al, 2022). Informing whether structural similarities can prevail over surface similarities in guiding retrieval is crucial, since it is a precondition to spontaneously interpret incoming experiences through relevant analogies.…”

“…The determinants of analogical retrieval have been extensively studied using the "twophase" experimental paradigm (George & Wiley, 2018;, where one or several source situations (i.e. stories or problems) are presented to the participants before introducing target cue situation(s) sharing different possible kinds of similarities with the initial stimuli (Gick & Holyoak, 1980;Holyoak & Koh, 1987;Gentner et al, 1993;Catrambone, 2002;Kubricht et al, 2017;Raynal et al, 2020). Adopting this type of procedure, Gentner and her colleagues have devised story-recall tasks where some target cue stories were designed to share either surface (i.e.…”

Découverte de solution et flexibilité cognitive

“…Dans un domaine connexe à la résolution de problèmes, une recherche récente sur l'évocation en mémoire par analogie montre que lorsque les situations sont familières (en l'occurrence de courts scenarii décrivant des situations de la vie quotidienne), elles évoquent préférentiellement en mémoire des situations qui partagent uniquement des similitudes de structure et aucune similitude de surface. (Raynal et al 2020). Quand les situations sont familières, alors les individus ont tendance à privilégier les similitudes de structure, et négliger les ressemblances superficielles.…”

The Internal Structure of Semantic Relations: Effects of Relational Similarity and Typicality

“…It is important to note that this assumption, that relational similarity cannot contribute to retrieval (referred to as the relational retrieval gap by Holyoak, 2012), is based primarily on studies in which participants solved complex problems that consisted of multiple elements and relations among them. Following Dunbar (2001), Popov et al (2017) argued that retrieval by relational similarity often fails in such tasks not because relational retrieval is impossible, but because representations of relations are often inconsistent across the base and target structures (for the same argument, see Jamrozik & Gentner, 2020;Raynal, Clément, & Sander, 2020). Nothing guarantees that when participants encode a complex multi-element base story they encode the relevant relations in the way they will do so for the target problem they have to solve.…”