Distant Connections: The Memory Basis of Creative Analogy

135 Pages·2020·2.363 MB·English

by  Máximo Trench, Ricardo A. Minervino

SPRINGER BRIEFS IN PSYCHOLOGY
COGNITION
Máximo Trench
Ricardo A. Minervino
Distant
Connections:
The Memory
Basis of Creative
Analogy
1 23
SpringerBriefs in Psychology
SpringerBriefs in Cognition
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Gesine Dreisbach, Fakultät für Psychologie, Universität Regensburg,
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Máximo Trench • Ricardo A. Minervino
Distant Connections:
The Memory Basis
of Creative Analogy
Máximo Trench Ricardo A. Minervino
Psychology Department National Scientific and Technical
IPEHCS, CONICET- Universidad Research Council
del Comahue IPEHCS, CONICET-Universidad
Bariloche, Rio Negro, Argentina del Comahue
Cipolletti, Rio Negro, Argentina
ISSN 2192-8363 ISSN 2192-8371 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Psychology
ISSN 2625-2929 ISSN 2625-2937 (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Cognition
ISBN 978-3-030-52547-7 ISBN 978-3-030-52545-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52545-3
© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020
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From Máximo
To my parents, who always supported my
dubious endeavors, and to my cheerful
daughter Lucía, from whom I borrowed the
time to complete this work
From Ricardo
To Bruno and Lorenzo, my lovely sons, for
having the good grace of not demanding me
the time that my insensate dedication to work
has stolen from them
Acknowledgments
Our sincere gratitude to Pedro Minervino for patiently satisfying almost tyrannical
restrictions in crafting our capricious illustrations. We are especially grateful to
Mark Keane, Ruth Byrne, Adam Green, Brian Ross, Kenneth Kurtz, Valeria Olguín,
and Micaela Tavernini for generous feedback and encouragement and to Robert
Goldstone, Douglas Hofstadter, and David Landy for opening their labs to us at
Indiana University, Bloomington. We are also indebted to Dedre Gentner and Keith
Holyoak for laying the foundations of this exciting line of inquiry.
vii
Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Analogy Research Within the Broader Enterprise
of Cognitive Science . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.2 Analogies Within a Broader Class of Similarity Relations . . . . . . . 5
1.3 A Computational Model of Analogical Mapping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.4 Structure of the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Part I A ssessing Our Ability to Retrieve Analogous Situations
2 The Experimental Tradition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.1 Experimental Studies of Analogical Problem-Solving . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.2 Experimental Studies of Story Reminding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.3 A Computer Model of Similarity-Based Retrieval:
MAC/ FAC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3 The Naturalistic Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.1 Analogies Produced by Scientists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.2 Analogies Produced by Journalists and Politicians . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
3.3 Analogies Generated by Design Engineers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.4 Analogies Proposed by Managers and Economists . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
3.5 Analogies Developed by Educators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
3.6 Computer Models of Superficially Unconstrained Retrieval . . . . . . 41
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4 Bridging the Divide Between the Experimental
and the Naturalistic Traditions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1 Blanchette and Dunbar’s Production Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.1.1 Reasons to Doubt the Superiority of Natural Encodings . . . 51
4.1.2 Reasons to Doubt the Adequacy of the Production
Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
ix
x Contents
4.2 A Hybrid Paradigm Retaining the Best of Experimental
and Naturalistic Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
4.2.1 Early Studies on the Retrieval
of Cultural Narratives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
4.2.2 Our Own Studies with Culturally Shared
Base Analogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
4.2.3 Is There a Retrieval Advantage of Autobiographical
Episodes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
4.3 Is There an Adaptive Advantage of Retrieving
Distant Analogs? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Part II O vercoming Competence Limitations for Retrieving
Distant Analogs
5 Interventions to Enhance the Initial Encoding
of Source Analogs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
5.1 Constructing Schematic Representations of Source Analogs . . . . . 68
5.1.1 Fostering Schema Construction by Comparing
Two Analogous Situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
5.1.2 Abstracting a Schema Out of a Single Example . . . . . . . . . 70
5.1.3 Generating Analogous Situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
5.1.4 Shifting from Domain-Specific to Domain-General
Language . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
5.1.5 Shifting from Concrete to Idealized Representations . . . . . 72
5.2 Assigning the Source Situations to Relational Categories . . . . . . . . 73
5.2.1 Category Construction from Multiple Source Analogs . . . . 75
5.2.2 Highlighting Abstract Patterns Via Relational Labeling . . . 76
5.3 Computer Simulations of Forward Transfer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
5.4 Conclusions: Potential and Limitations of Source Elaborations . . . 79
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
6 Boosting Retrieval via Deliberate Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
6.1 Spontaneous vs. Voluntary Retrieval During Argumentation . . . . . 84
6.2 Spontaneous vs. Voluntary Retrieval During Problem-Solving . . . . 86
6.3 Spontaneous vs Voluntary Retrieval During Hypothesis-Generation 88
6.4 Constraining a Model of Voluntary Analogical Retrieval . . . . . . . . 91
6.5 Conclusions: Potential and Limitations of Voluntary Search . . . . . 94
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96
7 Boosting Retrieval Via Target Elaborations
(the “Late Abstraction Principle”) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
7.1 Asking Participants to Compare Two Analogous Targets . . . . . . . . 101
7.2 Comparing the Target to a Disanalogous Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
7.3 Inventing an Analogous Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Contents xi
7.4 Constructing Abstract Conceptual
Representations of the Target . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
7.5 Constructing Idealized Visual Representations of the Target . . . . . 109
7.6 Computer Simulations of the Late Abstraction Principle . . . . . . . . 112
7.7 Can Late Abstraction Aid in Retrieving
Suboptimally Encoded Sources? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
7.8 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
8 Epilogue: Unanswered Questions and Future Challenges
in Creative Analogical Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
8.1 Is There a Basic Level of Abstraction? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
8.2 Beyond Strict Analogical Retrieval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129