Representational change and analogy: how analogical inferences alter target representations.

Full Abstract

The ways that analogy alters the representation of target information was investigated in 4 experiments. Participants read information about a target, followed by a potential source analog. Participants later completed a recognition test in which some of the sentences were old, some novel, and some analogical inferences that were not seen before. Participants who read the description of a source analog erroneously recognized analogical inferences as being in the target description. The effect occurred with different delays between study and test and with an unfamiliar target domain. It also occurred when source and target shared few superficial features. Reading-time data suggest that participants were drawing analogical inferences when encoding the source. Overall, these experiments show that analogical inferences are incorporated in the representation of the target and cannot be differentiated from information actually presented.

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Author information

Author/s: Blanchette, Isabelle (I); Dunbar, Kevin (K);

Affiliation: School of Psychology, Birkbeck College, University of London, United Kingdom. i.blanchette@psychology.bbk.ac.uk

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Journal of experimental psychology. Learning, memory, and cognition (J Exp Psychol Learn Mem Cogn), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2002-Jul; vol 28 (issue 4) : pp 672-85

Dates: Created 2002/07/11; Completed 2003/02/14; Revised 2006/11/15;

PMID: 12109761, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 11/6/2008)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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