THE EFFECTS OF MANIFEST RELATIONAL SIMILARITY ON ANALOG RETRIEVAL

The experiments presented here examined how varied representations of relational structure affect analog retrieval. Subjects were asked to i dentify analogies between disparate base and target passages. The expr ession of relations within analogs was varied to make the analogical s imilarity more or less manifest. Analog retrieval was better when pass ages (a) gave less instantiating detail and expressed analogous relati ons with relatively domain-general terms, i.e., terms that could fit b oth domains, as opposed to domain-specific terms whose components cann ot apply literally to both domains, or (b) expressed local analogous r elations by domain-general rather than domain-specific verbs, or (c) u sed a domain-general term to lexicalize a higher-order relation implic it in domain-specific detail. These results suggest that even when ana logous relations are embedded in dissimilar contexts, the way relation s are represented within those contexts can affect analogical access. Access is easier with manifest representations that require little re- representation to reveal a match across domains. (C) 1994 Academic Pre ss, Inc.