Having the Memory of an Elephant: Long-Term Retrieval and the Use of Analogues in Problem Solving (original) (raw)
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Cognitive Psychology, 1980
The use of an analogy from a semantically distant domain to guide the problemsolving process was investigated. The representation of analogy in memory and processes involved in the use of analogies were discussed theoretically and explored in five experiments. In Experiment I oral protocols were used to examine the processes involved in solving a problem by analogy. In all experiments subjects who first read a story about a military problem and its solution tended to generate analogous solutions to a medical problem (Duncker's "radiation problem"), provided they were given a hint to use the story to help solve the problem. Transfer frequency was reduced when the problem presented in the military story was substantially disanalogous to the radiation problem, even though the solution illustrated in the story corresponded to an effective radiation solution (Experiment II). Subjects in Experiment III tended to generate analogous solutions to the radiation problem after providing their own solutions to the military problem. Subjects were able to retrieve the story from memory and use it to generate an analogous solution, even when the critical story had been memorized in the context of two distractor stories (Experiment IV). However, when no hint to consider the story was given, frequency of analogous solutions decreased markedly. This decrease in transfer occurred when the story analogy was presented in a recall task along with distractor stories (Experiment IV), when it was presented alone, and when it was presented in between two attempts to solve the problem (Experiment V). Component processes and strategic variations in analogical problem solving were discussed. Issues related to noticing analogies and accessing them in memory were also examined, as was the relationship of analogical reasoning to other cognitive tasks.
Promoting interdomain analogical transfer: When creating a problem helps to solve a problem
Memory & Cognition, 2016
Research on analogical thinking has devised several ways of promoting an abstract encoding of base analogs, thus rendering them more retrievable during later encounters with similar situations lacking surface similarities. Recent studies have begun to explore ways of facilitating transfer at retrieval time, which could facilitate the retrieval of distant analogs learned within contexts that were not specially directed to emphasize their abstract structure. Such studies demonstrate that comparing a target problem to an analogous problem helps students retrieve base analogs that lack surface similarities. To devise more portable ways of enhancing analogical transfer, Experiment 1 replicated Kurtz and Loewenstein's (Memory & Cognition, 35, 334-341, 2007) target-comparison procedure with an additional condition in which participants compared the target to a nonanalogous problem before attempting to reach its solution. Although comparing two analogous targets outperformed the standard transfer condition in promoting analogical transfer, comparing nonanalogous problems did not yield a transfer advantage. Based on prior studies that showed that the activity of creating analogous problems during their initial encoding elicits a more abstract representation of base analogs, in Experiment 2 we assessed whether constructing a second analogous target problem at retrieval time helps participants retrieve superficially dissimilar base analogs. As predicted, target invention increased the retrieval of distant sources. In both experiments we found an association between the quality of the generated schemas and the probability of retrieving a distant base analog from memory.
Memory & cognition, 2007
People often fail to retrieve examples analogous to a current problem or situation. There is good evidence that comparing structurally matching cases facilitates subsequent analogical access. However, current approaches offer little at the time of memory search to promote retrieval of a routinely encoded analogous source. We adapted Gick and Holyoak's (1980, 1983) classic paradigm to investigate whether comparing two unsolved problems at test promotes retrieval of a single previously studied analogue. In Experiment 1, comparison of test problems facilitated analogical problem solving. Experiment 2 showed that comparison is the critical factor since solving two test problems separately proved ineffective. In Experiment 3, comparing two problems led to greater success for participants who read a prior analogous story than those who did not, demonstrating specifically that comparison facilitates retrieval. The three studies show that analogical access is powerfully determined by pr...
Analogical problem solving and prospective memory
2010
Analogical problem solving happens any time we solve a novel problem, or target problem, by analogy to something that we know from another domain of knowledge, usually called the source domain. In this paper, I suggest that this process is very similar to the processes that occur when we remember to perform an intended action, as is the case in
Analogical encoding: Facilitating knowledge transfer and integration
Proceedings of the …, 2004
People's ability to recall and use prior experience when faced with current problems is surprisingly limited. We suggest that one reason is that information is often encoded in a situationspecific manner, so that subsequent remindings are limited to situations that are similar to the original both in content and in context. Analogical encoding-the explicit comparison of two partially understood situations-can foster the discovery of common principles and allow transfer to new structurally similar situations. This paper addresses two new questions: (1) whether comparison can also improve people's ability to retrieve examples from long term memory; and (2) whether simply providing the common principle would suffice to promote transfer. The results show (1) that not only does comparing examples facilitate transfer forward to a new problem, it can also facilitate transfer backwards to retrieve an example from memory; and (2) providing a common principle is not sufficient: comparison is still beneficial.
Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science and Technology Education
We conducted a qualitative research of case studies based on think-aloud protocols. The aim was to carry out in-depth analyse secondary students' cognitive difficulties appearing in early stages of transfer processes in problem-solving. The task was to relate several source problems to a target problem, in order to solve it effectively. Source and target problems had different Surface and/or Structural similarities. In this paper, the solvers' high or low Familiarity with the problem stories on transfer processes was also focused on. Two emergent instructional phenomena are described, both associated to specific students' cognitive obstacles to achieve success in solving the target problem: the 'Screen effect' and the 'Sisyphus effect'. The obstacles were harder for low Familiarity problems.
Memory & Cognition, 2004
Two experiments in reasoning by analogy were conducted to study the role of inducing source difficulty by reducing the salience of the source’s structural elements. Three nonexclusive hypotheses were tested. According to the first, a difficult source problem improves analogical transfer because it increases the probability that the subject will notice the similarity between the source and the target. For example, errors made on both the source and the target can enhance the subject’s awareness of the similarity between the two problems. According to the second hypothesis, a source that is difficult to solve is memorized better than an easier source. According to the third, source-problem difficulty affects the degree of abstractness in the representation of the solution elaborated by subjects. Experiment 1 showed that the higher frequency of spontaneous transfer between the source and the target when the source problem was difficult (Gick & McGarry, 1992) could be replicated in a cued-transfer situation. Experiment 2 showed that subjects given a difficult source, one in which the important element was not very salient, were better at categorizing isomorphic problems on the basis of structural features than were subjects given an easy source. The discussion deals with the implications of these results for the hypotheses tested and, more generally, for reasoning by analogy and education in general.
The role of analogy in transfer between similar problem states*1
Cognitive Psychology, 1974
The study investigated the effect of transfer between two problems having similar (homomorphic) problem states. The results of three experiments revealed that although transfer occurred between repetition of the same problems, transfer occurred between the Jealous Husbands problem and the Missionary—Cannibal problem only when (a) Ss were told the relationship between the two problems and (b) the Jealous Husbands problem was given first. The results are related to the formal structure of the problem space and to alternative explanations of the use of analogy in problem solving. These include memory for individual moves, memory for general strategies, and practice in applying operators.