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Research Details

Reviving inert knowledge: Analogical encoding supports relational retrieval of past events, Cognitive Science

Abstract

We present five experiments and simulation studies to establish late analogical abstraction as a new psychological phenomenon: Schema abstraction from analogical examples can revive otherwise inert knowledge. We find that comparing two analogous examples of negotiations at recall time promotes retrieving analogical matches stored in memory, a notoriously elusive effect. Another innovation in this research is that we show parallel effects for real-life autobiographical memory (Experiments 1 and 3) and for a controlled memory set (Experiments 4 and 5). Simulation studies show that a unified model based on schema abstraction can capture backward (retrieval) effects as well as forward (transfer) effects.

Type

Article

Author(s)

Dedre Gentner, Jeffrey Loewenstein, Leigh Thompson, K. D. Forbus

Date Published

2009

Citations

Gentner, Dedre, Jeffrey Loewenstein, Leigh Thompson, and K. D. Forbus. 2009. Reviving inert knowledge: Analogical encoding supports relational retrieval of past events. Cognitive Science. 33: 1343-1382.

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