Structure mapping in analogy and similarity.

Abstract

Analogy and similarity are often assumed to be distinct psychological processes.In contrast to this position, the authors suggest that both similarity and analogy involve a process of structural alignment and mapping, that is, that similarity is like analogy.In this article, the authors first describe the structure-mapping process as it has b+"en worked outfor analogy.Then, this view is extended to similarity, where it is used to generate newpredictions.Finally, the authors explore broader implications of structural alignmentfor psychological processing.nalogy and similarity are central in cognitive processing .They are often viewed as quite sepaate: Analogy is a clever, sophisticated process used in creative discovery, whereas similarity is a brute perceptual process that we share with the entire animal kingdom.This view of similarity has important implications for the way we model human thinking, because similarity is demonstrably important across many areas of cognition.We store experiences in categories largely on the basis of their similarity to a category representation or to stored exemplars (Smith & Medin, 1981).In transfer; new problems are solved using procedures taken from prior similar problems (Bassok, 1990 ;