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Relations, Objects, and the Composition of Analogies
Author(s) -
Gentner Dedre,
Kurtz Kenneth J.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
cognitive science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.498
H-Index - 114
eISSN - 1551-6709
pISSN - 0364-0213
DOI - 10.1207/s15516709cog0000_60
Subject(s) - analogy , similarity (geometry) , sentence , object (grammar) , matching (statistics) , cognitive psychology , natural language processing , task (project management) , psychology , focus (optics) , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , linguistics , statistics , philosophy , management , economics , image (mathematics) , physics , optics
This research addresses the kinds of matching elements that determine analogical relatedness and literal similarity. Despite theoretical agreement on the importance of relational match, the empirical evidence is neither systematic nor definitive. In 3 studies, participants performed online evaluations of relatedness of sentence pairs that varied in either the object or relational match. Results show a consistent focus on relational matches as the main determinant of analogical acceptance. In addition, analogy does not require strict overall identity of relational concepts. Semantically overlapping but nonsynonymous relations were commonly accepted, but required more processing time. Finally, performance in a similarity rating task partly paralleled analogical acceptance; however, relatively more weight was given to object matches. Implications for psychological theories of analogy and similarity are addressed.