Analogical comparison

Analogical comparison operates through aligning and mapping two example problem representations to one another and then extracting their commonalities (Gentner, 1983; Gick & Holyoak, 1983; Hummel & Holyoak, 2003). This process discards the elements of the knowledge representation that do not overlap between two examples but preserves the common elements. The resulting knowledge organization typically consists of fewer superficial similarities (than the examples) but retains the deep causal structure of the problems.

References

• Gentner, D. (1983). Structure-mapping: A theoretical framework for analogy, Cognitive Science, 7, 155-170.
• Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1983). Schema induction and analogical transfer. Cognitive Psychology, 15, 1-38.
• Hummel, J. E., & Holyoak, K. J. (2003). A symbolic-connectionist theory of relational inference and generalization. Psychological Review, 110, 220-264.