REMOTE ANALOGICAL REMINDING

Remote analogical reminding is hypothesized to occur when one episode is cued by another sharing similar themes but not similar object, char acter, or event descriptions. We report three experiments exploring th is view. Subjects' remindings in Experiment 1 showed sensitivity to re mote analogical similarity even though targets were encoded only brief ly in an incidental learning paradigm. Experiment 2 subjects showed re liable remindings of remote analogs with study-test delays of up to 1 week. Experiment 3 demonstrated that remote analogical reminding effec ts are not an artifact of subjects' editing nonanalogical remindings. All experiments supported the hypothesis that human memory is sensitiv e to remote analogical similarity. We discuss the implications of thes e findings for memory models. Future progress requires the development of formal models that quantify factors relevant to reminding performa nce, such as reminding interference, transfer-appropriate processing, and domain expertise.