Cognitive Flexibility and Analogy

Abstract

Analogies are fundamental to our minds as they allow us to interpret incoming experiences, which are always, strictly speaking, new, in light of more familiar situations. These comparisons are particularly useful to guide comprehension in that they are not solely based on the superficial appearance of situations, but on deeper commonalities making a given situation essentially similar to another one. As such, they are crucial to guide the resolution of new problems by transferring solution procedures associated with analog problems solved in the past.Certain analogies may be implemented in a relatively straightforward way. A new situation is conceptualized in the same way as a previously encountered situation, and this common conceptualization leads to the two situations being brought together. For instance, one may easily assimilate a royal crown and a roman laurel wreath despite their distinct appearances, as they are first and foremostly seen as symbols of authority. The objects from this comparison may not have to be perceived from a new and unusual perspective. However, there are analogies that may precisely depend on the ability to change our point of view about a given object or situation. The famous analogy drawn by Archimedes to verify whether the king's crown was entirely made out of gold illustrates this necessity (Goswami 1992;

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

“…While several studies have suggested that structurally-based retrievals are very rare (Gick & Holyoak, 1980;Keane, 1987;Ross, 1989;Gentner et al, 2009;Jamrozik & Gentner, 2020), others have obtained evidence illustrating the important role of structural similarities in retrieval (Wharton et al, 1996;Blanchette & Dunbar, 2000;Raynal et al, 2020). In line with several authors, we suggest that the difficulty to retrieve superficially dissimilar analogs in several prior studies was not due to the nature of the retrieval mechanism per se, but rather to the difficulty to encode particularly unfamiliar structures (Dunbar, 2001;Sander & Richard, 2005;Popov et al, 2017;Raynal, 2022). In most research documenting the failure to base retrieval on structural similarities, participants were presented with experimental stimuli exhibiting structures that they may never have encountered before the experiment (e.g., convergence schema, permutations, contingent contract, positive feedback loop, etc).…”

“…According to Dunbar (2001), an important difference is that one can generate her own analogies in real-life conditions, whereas sources are imposed by the experimenter in traditional laboratory settings. In order to take advantage of the ecological validity characterizing naturalistic studies while benefiting from the control of experimental settings, researchers have designed experiments in which participants were allowed to produce analogies with their own extra-experimental sources (Blanchette & Dunbar, 2000;Chen et al, 2004;Gentner et al, 2009;Trench & Minervino, 2015;Olguín et al, 2022;Raynal et al, 2018Raynal et al, , 2023. However, we point out that there remains at least one crucial aspect that may prevent researchers from generalizing their experimental findings to how analogical retrieval occurs in real-life, which relates to the format of the experimental stimuli which is used.…”

Food for thought: an analogy for digital sovereignty in education

“…The initial encoding of a situation is modulated by the prior knowledge of those addressing it [40]. In the case of digital sovereignty in education, most practitioners (non-technologically experts) are likely to inadequately situate the problem of integrating education with technology.…”

“…Analogical comparison has been shown to be especially effective a means to induce a more abstract representation than the initial encoding [42], when the inferences are based on factual correctness (or sufficient interest is perceived to justify trying to test it), inferences are relevant to the goal, and the analogy generates a relevant amount of new knowledge about the target situation. This happens, especially, when using superficially dissimilar analogies, which are not similar in its surface features, but at the level of their structure [40].…”

Cognitive Flexibility Or Flexibilities? Insights From A Classroom Study.

“…Cognitive flexibility has been shown to support the development of several skills from a young age, such as creative thinking (e.g., Arán Filippetti & Krumm, 2020;Ebersbach & Hagedorn, 2011;Pan & Yu, 2018;Runco, 2004), lexical and conceptual knowledge (e.g., Blaye & Bonthoux, 2001;Blaye & Maintenant, 2008;Deák, 2003;Duvignau et al, 2007), problem solving (Clément, 2009(Clément, , 2022Gros, Thibaut, & Sander, 2020;Raynal, 2022;Zelazo & Frye, 1998), as well as many aspects of school achievement such as mathematics, reading, and literacy (e.g., Arán Filippetti & Richaud, 2017;Bull & Scerif, 2001;Gros & Gvozdic, 2022;Iacono, Gros, & Clément, 2022;Titz & Karbach, 2014;Yeniad et al, 2013). For instance, it has been suggested that cognitive flexibility development contributes to reading fluency in early readers by helping them to switch between phonological and semantic word properties (Cartwright et al, 2019).…”