Mapping and Inference in Analogical Problem SolvingAs Much

30th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society

as Needed or as Much as Possible? ; Institute of Psychology ; Faculty of Humanities ; University of Bamberg Markusplatz 3 ; 96045 Bamberg ; Germany ; Institute of Community Medicine ; University of Greifswald Walther-Rathenau-Strae 48 ; 17475 Greifswald ; Germany

PID  :  118766

来源: CEUR

【 摘 要 】

There exist many computational models of analogy making, which are based on different assumptions about the cognitive processes which are responsible for successful transfer from a base to a target domain. In most models, mapping of the base structure to the target is seen as the core of analogy mak ing. We believe that the way in which this mapping is realized is a crucial aspect by which the different models can be dis tinguished. More specific, we identified systematic (as much as possible) versus pragmatic (as much as needed) approaches to mapping as critical assumption by which the computational models can be discerned. In case of pragmatic mapping, only such aspects of the base domain are carried over to the tar get which address the current focus of interest. In contrast, in case of systematic mapping, the greatest relational structure which contains the aligned parts of base and target is carried over. In consequence, in systematic approaches, many aspects of the target problem are inferred at one time and available for future use, while in pragmatic approaches new questions con cerning the target domain may require that mapping and infer ence must be performed again. We conducted an experiment in the domain of physics to investigate which type of mapping is realized by human problem solvers and got significant evi dence for systematic mapping.