El rol de las similitudes superficiales en la explicación analógica

In the present study, the effects of two types of surface similarities (object similarity and domain similarity) on the processes of retrieval analogous situations involved in generating explanatory hypotheses were evaluated. In one experiment, it was found that both object similarity and domain similarity were sufficient to increase the spontaneous retrieval of an analogous situation studied in a previous phase. In the absence of both types of similarities, the recall of the analogous situation decreased significantly. Analogical retrieval proved to be a necessary condition for transfer, as virtually all participants who applied the causal structure of the base situation to the target phenomenon reported remembering that situation. However, the retrieval of an analogous situation did not guarantee the application of its causal structure to the target phenomenon, especially when the objects in both situations were not similar. The implications of these results for education and in the realm of computational models of analogical retrieval are discussed.