Structural vs. Superficial Similarity During Unprompted Analogical Retrieval: Which one Exerts a Greater Force?

RICARDO MINERVINO; MAXIMO TRENCH

Toronto

Congreso; 44th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society; 2022

Cognitive Science Society

Traditionallaboratory studies have found that people are more likely to retrieve surfacematches than distant analogs, suggesting that superficial similarities exert astronger influence than structural similarities on retrieval. However, it hasbeen contended that the observed supremacy of surface similarity may haveoriginated in experimental conditions that are unfairly adverse for theretrieval of distant analogs, as well as in a faulty separation between surfaceand structural similarity during the construction of surface matches. In twoexperiments, we presented a target item that maintained only superficialsimilarities with one extra-experimental source and only structuralsimilarities with another one. By using natural items, we were able to avoid theshallow processing often attributed to experimental analogs, while carefullycontrolling that surface matches did not maintain structural similarities.Converging with traditional results, our data showed a more frequent retrievalof surface matches than of distant analogs, indicatinga supremacy of superficial similarities during retrieval@font-face{font-family:"Cambria Math";panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:roman;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;}@font-face{font-family:Times;panose-1:0 0 5 0 0 0 0 2 0 0;mso-font-charset:0;mso-generic-font-family:auto;mso-font-pitch:variable;mso-font-signature:-536870145 1342185562 0 0 415 0;}p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal{mso-style-unhide:no;mso-style-qformat:yes;mso-style-parent:"";margin:0cm;text-align:justify;text-indent:9.05pt;mso-pagination:widow-orphan;font-size:10.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;mso-fareast-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}.MsoChpDefault{mso-style-type:export-only;mso-default-props:yes;font-size:10.0pt;mso-ansi-font-size:10.0pt;mso-bidi-font-size:10.0pt;font-family:Times;mso-ascii-font-family:Times;mso-fareast-font-family:Times;mso-hansi-font-family:Times;mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}div.WordSection1{page:WordSection1;}