Seek,and ye shall find: Differences between spontaneous and voluntary analogical retrieval

The present study tackles two overlooked aspects of analogical retrieval: (a) whether argumentation activities elicit a spontaneous search for analogical sources, and (b) whether strategic search can relax the superficial bias typically obtained in experimental studies of analogical retrieval. In Experiment 1, participants had to generate arguments for a target situation under three conditions: without indication to use analogies, with indication to use analogies, and with indication to search for sources within domains provided by the experimenters. Results showed that while voluntary search yields analogical retrievals reliably, the argumentation activity seldom elicits spontaneous remindings. A second set of results demonstrated that the superficial bias can be strategically relaxed, leading to a majority of distant retrievals. Experiment 2 replicated this result with the instruction to search within domains different from that of the target, and without providing a list of specific domains. The theoretical and educational implications of these findings are discussed.     

Surface and structural similarity in analogical transfer

Two experiments investigated factors that influence the retrieval and use of analogies in problem solving, Experiment 1 demonstrated substantial spontaneous analogical transfer with a delay of several days between presentation of the source and target analogues. Experiment 2 examined the influence of different types of similarity between the analogues. A mechanism for retrieval of source analogues is proposed, based on summation of activation from features shared with a target problem. The results of Experiment 2 indicated that both structural features, which play a causal role in determining possible problem solutions, and salient surface features, which do not have a causal role, influence spontaneous selection of an analogue. Structural features, however, have a greater impact than do surface features on a problem solver’s ability to use an analogue once its relevance has been pointed out.     

MAC/FAC: A Model of Similarity-Based Retrieval

We present a model of similarity-based retrieval that attempts to capture three seemingly contradictory psychological phenomena: (a) structural commonalities are weighed more heavily than surface commonalities in similarity judgments for items in working memory; (b) in retrieval, superficial similarity is more important than structural similarity; and yet (c) purely structural (analogical) remindings e sometimes experienced. Our model, MAC/FAC, explains these phenomena in terms of a two-stage process. The first stage uses a computationally cheap, non-structural matcher to filter candidate long-term memory items. It uses content vectors, a redundant encoding of structured representations whose dot product estimates how well the corresponding structural representations will match. The second stage uses SME (structure-mapping engine) to compute structural matches on the handful of items found by the first stage. We show the utility of the MAC/FAC model through a series of computational experiments: (a) We demonstrate that MAC/FAC can model patterns of access found in psychological data; (b) we argue via sensitivity analyses that these simulation results rely on the theory; and (c) we compare the performance of MAC/FAC with ARCS, an alternate model of similarity-based retrieval, and demonstrate that MAC/FAC explains the data better than ARCS. Finally, we discuss limitations and possible extensions of the model, relationships with other recent retrieval models, and place MAC/FAC in the context of other recent work on the nature of similarity.     

The in vivo/in vitro approach to cognition: the case of analogy

A new way of investigating cognition is proposed that combines naturalistic (in vivo) and experimental (in vitro) methods into a single approach. Investigating analogical reasoning by scientists 'live' at laboratory meetings (in vivo) we found that the types of analogies they use change with their goals. Unlike subjects in many cognitive 'reminding' experiments, scientists frequently used structural similarities in their analogies, as opposed to superficial similarities. By subsequently using the in vitro approach, we found that the use of structural information was associated with being asked to generate analogies and with the use of complex scenarios. Similar results are obtained in other areas of reasoning such as hypothesis testing and causal reasoning.     

The forgotten remindings: Personal remindings examined through self-probed retrospection during reading and writing

Remindings are spontaneously arising recollections of past personal experiences that are instrumental in that they occur in response to an ongoing task to which they are perceived as being related. While related areas of research have found the number of off-task thoughts to decrease with the difficulty of the on-going task, task difficulty has yet to be examined in remindings. Here we present a series of studies examining the effects of task difficulty on remindings as well as further examining the phenomenological characteristics of remindings. Experiments 1–3 provide evidence that the frequency of remindings during different types of reading and writing task decreases with increasing difficulty associated with the parallel task. Experiment 4 shows that the content of remindings varies systematically with characteristics of the parallel task, indicating their context dependency and potential instrumentality. Findings are discussed in relation to research on mind wandering and involuntary autobiographical memories.     

First‐time viewers' comprehension of films: Bridging shot transitions

Which perceptual and cognitive prerequisites must be met in order to be able to comprehend a film is still unresolved and a controversial issue. In order to gain some insights into this issue, our field experiment investigates how first‐time adult viewers extract and integrate meaningful information across film cuts. Three major types of commonalities between adjacent shots were differentiated, which may help first‐time viewers with bridging the shots: pictorial, causal, and conceptual. Twenty first‐time, 20 low‐experienced and 20 high‐experienced viewers from Turkey were shown a set of short film clips containing these three kinds of commonalities. Film clips conformed also to the principles of continuity editing. Analyses of viewers' spontaneous interpretations show that first‐time viewers indeed are able to notice basic pictorial (object identity), causal (chains of activity), as well as conceptual (links between gaze direction and object attention) commonalities between shots due to their close relationship with everyday perception and cognition. However, first‐time viewers' comprehension of the commonalities is to a large degree fragile, indicating the lack of a basic notion of what constitutes a film.     

Individual Characteristics of Political Leaders and the Use of Analogy in Foreign Policy Decision Making

The linkages between individual characteristics of political leaders and their usage of historical analogy during foreign policy decision-making episodes were examined. The individual characteristics studied were conceptual complexity and policy expertise, while usage of analogy was studied in terms of the sophistication and source of historical comparisons. The great majority of the analogies used by low-complexity individuals were nonsophisticated, whereas high-complexity individuals consistently used more sophisticated analogies. Low-complexity individuals drew analogies solely from their own generational and cultural context, while high-complexity leaders drew their analogies from a wider range of sources. More expert leaders drew from their personal experiences to a marginally greater degree than less expert individuals but, interestingly, both types of individual relied on generally available rather than personally experienced events for their analogies. The value added of the approach is to demonstrate that different types of leaders use history differently during political decision making.     

Skimming the surface. Verbal overshadowing of analogical retrieval

It has become almost a maxim that "talking through" a problem is advantageous. Contrary to this wisdom, studies from numerous domains have demonstrated that describing one's thought processes or analyzing a judgment may, in some circumstances, actually impair performance. The two experiments reported here built upon prior work by examining the effect of verbalization on the retrieval of analogies. Participants read a series of 16 short stories. Later, they were presented with 8 test stories and indicated whether these stories were analogies of the stories they had read previously. Each test story shared the same deep structure with one prior story and only surface characteristics with another prior story. Half of the participants completed the test while thinking aloud, and half did not think aloud. In both experiments, participants who thought aloud were more likely to retrieve surface matches and less likely to retrieve true analogies than participants who did not verbalize their thoughts during the test.     

How analogies are generated: The roles of structural and superficial similarity

Laboratory studies of analogical reasoning have shown that subjects are mostly influenced by superficial similarity in the retrieval of source analogs. However, real-world investigations have demonstrated that people generate analogies using deep structural features. We conducted three experiments to determine why laboratory and real-world studies have yielded different results. In the first two experiments, we used a "production paradigm" in which subjects were asked to generate sources for a given target. Results show that the majority of the analogies that were generated displayed low levels of superficial similarity with the target problem. Moreover, most of the analogies were based on complex underlying structures. The third experiment used a "reception paradigm" methodology. The subjects had to retrieve predetermined sources instead of generate their own. In this case, retrieval was largely constrained by surface similarity. We conclude that people can use structural relations when given an appropriate task and that this ability has been underestimated in previous research on analogy.     

On the origin of personal causal theories

Detecting the causal relations among environmental events is an important facet of learning. Certain variables have been identified which influence both human causal attribution and animal learning: temporal priority, temporal and spatial contiguity, covariation and contingency, and prior experience. Recent research has continued to find distinct commonalities between the influence these variables have in the two domains, supporting a neo-Humean analysis of the origins of personal causal theories. The cues to causality determine which event relationships will be judged as causal; personal causal theories emerge as a result of these judgments and in turn affect future attributions. An examination of animal learning research motivates further extensions of the analogy. Researchers are encouraged to study real-time causal attributions, to study additional methodological analogies to conditioning paradigms, and to develop rich learning accounts of the acquisition of causal theories.     

The Roles of Similarity in Transfer: Separating Retrievability From Inferential Soundness

Similarity is universally acknowledged to be central in transfer, but recent research suggests that its role is complex. The present research attempts to isolate and compare the determinants of similarity-based access to memory and the determinants of the subjective soundness and similarity of a match. We predicted, based on structure-mapping theory, that subjective soundness would depend on the degree of shared relational structure, particularly higher-order structure such as causal bindings. In contrast, we predicted that memory retrieval would be highly sensitive to surface similarities such as common object attributes. To assess retrievability, in three studies, subjects were asked to read a large set of stories and were later given a set of probe stories that resembled the original stories in systematically different ways; e.g., purely relational analogies, surface-similarity matches, or overall (literal similarity) matches. Subjects were told to write out any of the original stories that came to mind. To assess subjective soundness, independent subjects (and also the same reminding subjects) were asked to rate the inferential soundness of each pair; i.e., how well inferences true of one story would apply to the other. As predicted, subjective soundness was highly related to the degree of common relational structure, while retrievability was chiefly related to the degree of surface similarity. Ratings of the similarity of the pairs did not predict the retrievability ordering, arguing against the possibility that the retrieval ordering simply reflected overall similarity. Further, a fourth study demonstrated that subjects given a forced-choice recognition task could discriminate between possible matches on the basis of relational structure, ruling out the possibility that the poor relational retrieval resulted from forgetting or failing to encode the relational structure. We conclude that there is a dissociation between the similarity that governs access to long-term memory and that which is used in evaluating and reasoning from a present match. We describe a model, called MAC/FAC ("any are called but few are chosen"), that uses a two-stage similarity retrieval process to model these findings. Finally, we speculate on the implications of this view for learning and transfer.     

How intention and monitoring your thoughts influence characteristics of autobiographical memories

Involuntary autobiographical memories come to mind effortlessly and unintended, but the mechanisms of their retrieval are not fully understood. We hypothesize that involuntary retrieval depends on memories that are highly accessible (e.g., intense, unusual, recent, rehearsed), while the elaborate search that characterizes voluntary retrieval also produces memories that are mundane, repeated or distant – memories with low accessibility. Previous research provides some evidence for this ‘threshold hypothesis’. However, in almost every prior study, participants have been instructed to report only memories while ignoring other thoughts. It is possible that such an instruction can modify the phenomenological characteristics of involuntary memories. This study aimed to investigate the effects of retrieval intentionality (i.e., wanting to retrieve a memory) and selective monitoring (i.e., instructions to report only memories) on the phenomenology of autobiographical memories. Participants were instructed to (1) intentionally retrieve autobiographical memories, (2) intentionally retrieve any type of thought (3) wait for an autobiographical memory to spontaneously appear, or (4) wait for any type of thought to spontaneously appear. They rated the mental content on a number of phenomenological characteristics both during retrieval and retrospectively following retrieval. The results support the prediction that highly accessible memories mostly enter awareness unintended and without selective monitoring, while memories with low accessibility rely on intention and selective monitoring. We discuss the implications of these effects.     

More evidence for a relational shift in the development of analogy: Children's performance on a causal-mapping task

Gentner (1988) has proposed a relational shift whereby children interpret analogy and metaphor first in terms of object similarity and then in terms of relational similarity. Goswami (1996) argues against the relational shift hypothesis, citing as evidence a study performed by Goswami and Brown (1989) in which 3-, 4-, and 6-year-old children were able to correctly complete pictorial A:B::C:? analogies based on familiar causal relations, and, contrary to the predictions of the relational shift hypothesis, made very few object-similarity errors despite the presence of an object-similarity choice. In the present experiment we obtained similarity ratings of Goswami and Brown's stimuli and found that the materials did not contain a true object similarity choice and therefore that study was not an adequate test of the relational shift hypothesis. After appropriate modifications to their methodology, we found that 4- and 5-year-old children's performance was consistent with the relational shift hypothesis: First, object-similarity errors were highly frequent initially and decreased with age; second, the rate of relational (correct) responding increased with age; and third, performance on the analogues was positively related to children's knowledge about the participating causal relations. We conclude by proposing an explanation for the relational shift based on an alignment view of similarity comparison and, further, suggest a new role for object similarity in children's analogical development.     

Prospective memory and aging: preserved spontaneous retrieval,but impaired deactivation,in older adults

Prospective remembering is partially supported by cue-driven spontaneous retrieval processes. We investigated spontaneous retrieval processes in younger and older adults by presenting prospective memory target cues during a lexical decision task following instructions that the prospective memory task was finished. Spontaneous retrieval was inferred from slowed lexical decision responses to target cues (i.e., intention interference). When the intention was finished, younger adults efficiently deactivated their intention, but the older adults continued to retrieve their intentions. Levels of inhibitory functioning were negatively associated with intention interference in the older adult group, but not in the younger adult group. These results indicate that normal aging might not compromise spontaneous retrieval processes but that the ability to deactivate completed intentions is impaired.     

Correlation,partial correlation,and causation

Philosophers and scientists have maintained that causation, correlation, and “partial correlation” are essentially related. These views give rise to various rules of causal inference. This essay considers the claims of several philosophers and social scientists for causal systems with dichotomous variables. In section 2 important commonalities and differences are explicated among four major conceptions of correlation. In section 3 it is argued that whether correlation can serve as a measure of A's causal influence on B depends upon the conception of causation being used and upon certain background assumptions. In section 4 five major kinds of “partial correlation” are explicated, and some of the important relations are established among two conceptions of “partial correlation”, the conception of “screening off”, the conception of “partitioning”, and the measures of causal influence which have been suggested by advocates of path analysis or structural equation methods. In section 5 it is argued that whether any of these five conceptions of “partial correlation” can serve as a measure of causal influence depends upon the conception of causation being used and upon certain background assumptions. The important conclusion is that each of the approaches (considered here) to causal inference for causal systems with dichotomous variables stands in need of important qualifications and revisions if they are to be justified.     

Expert Trespassing Testimony and the Ethics of Science Communication

Scientific expert testimony is crucial to public deliberation, but it is associated with many pitfalls. This article identifies one—namely, expert trespassing testimony—which may be characterized, crudely, as the phenomenon of experts testifying outside their domain of expertise. My agenda is to provide a more precise characterization of this phenomenon and consider its ramifications for the role of science in society. I argue that expert trespassing testimony is both epistemically problematic and morally problematic. Specifically, I will argue that scientific experts are subject to a particular obligation. Roughly, this is the obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of scientific expertise in certain contexts. Thus, I argue that scientists who possess expert knowledge are confronted with hard questions about when and how to testify and, therefore, that being a scientific expert comes with great responsibility. Consequently, I provide a concrete “expert guideline” according to which scientific experts, in certain contexts, face an obligation to qualify their assertions when speaking outside their domain of expertise. Furthermore, I consider a number of the conditions in which the guideline is waived or overridden. On this basis, I consider the broader aspects of the roles of scientific experts in a society with a high division of cognitive labor that calls for trust in scientific expert testimony.     

Just because you're imaging the brain doesn't mean you can stop using your head: a primer and set of first principles

Developments within the neurosciences, cognitive sciences, and social sciences have contributed to the emergence of social neuroscience. Among the most obvious contemporary developments are brain-imaging procedures such as functional magnetic resonance imaging. The authors outline a set of first principles designed to help make sense of brain-imaging research within the fields of cognitive and social neuroscience. They begin with a principle few would debate--that social cognition, emotion, and behavior involve the brain--but whose implications might not be entirely obvious to those new to the field. The authors conclude that (a). complex aspects of the mind and behavior will benefit from yet a broader collaboration of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and social scientists, and (b). social psychologists bring important theoretical, methodological, and statistical expertise to this interdisciplinary enterprise.