THE EFFECTS OF ALIGNABILITY ON MEMORY

According to structure-mapping theory, the process of comparison is on e of alignment and mapping between representational structures. This p rocess induces a focus on commonalities and alignable differences (i.e ., those related to the commonalities). Non-alignable differences (i.e ., those nor related to the commonalities) are held to be neglected. T he theory thus predicts increased focus on rite corresponding informat ion, whether these are commonalities or differences. In this article, we explore the implications of this claim for memory: Specifically, we test the prediction that alignable differences are more likely to be processed and stored than nonalignable differences. We present a study in which people made similarity comparisons between pairs of pictures and then were probed for recall. The recall probes were figures taken from the pictures and were either alignable or nonalignable differenc es between the pairs. The alignable differences were better memory pro bes than the nonalignable differences, suggesting that people were mor e likely to encode and store the corresponding information than the no ncorresponding information.