Behavioral studies and computer simulations of analogical retrieval suggest that the availability of surface matches in long-term memory (LTM) hinders the spontaneous retrieval of purely structural analogs. We investigated whether this competition effect still holds during hypothesis-generation, a goal-driven activity that entails a more profound and sustained consideration of the target situation. In two experiments, we obtained that the availability of a less isomorphic but more superficially similar item did not complicate retrieving a structural analog, thus suggesting that goal-driven activities such as hypothesis generation aid participants in overcoming the activation of a structurally suboptimal analog in working memory, as compared to pragmatically impoverished activities such as reading the target situation. However, the activation of the surface match hindered the successful application of structural matches that were successfully retrieved. Results render a more nuanced picture of the role of surface similarities in analogical thinking, traditionally restricted to the retrieval stage.

Analogical studies demonstrate that participants often fail to retrieve a well-learned base analog during the subsequent processing of a semantically-distant target analog. We evaluated whether presenting the target analog before the base analog increases analogical retrieval during hypothesis-generation. Experiment 1 revealed a higher rate of analogical retrieval when the target analog preceded the base analog, as compared to the traditional “base-target” sequence. Using a factorial design, Experiment 2 assessed whether spontaneously acknowledging the relevance of a subsequently encountered explanation for resuming a failed explanatory attempt requires the presence of structural similarities between the base and target situations. Results demonstrated that the primary contributor to spontaneous reactivation of a failed explanatory attempt is the presentation of an analogous phenomenon, while the presence of a useful explanation alone did not yield a significant impact. These findings contribute valuable insights to the dynamics of analogical retrieval and offer relevant implications for educational strategies.

In two experiments on analogical hypothesis generation, we factorially manipulated the presence of domain and object similarities between a base situation and a target phenomenon, and assessed their effects on the transfer of the source’s explanatory structure before and after an indication to use the base analog as a source for analogical explanations. The absence of any kind of surface similarity led to very low rates of spontaneous transfer. In both experiments, however, either kind of surface similarity sufficed to enhance the spontaneous transfer of the base explanation during the formulation of plausible hypotheses for the target. The transfer advantage of object and domain similarity cannot be attributed to the effect of these variables on post-access processes, since experimental conditions did not differ with regard to the ability to transfer the base explanation upon explicit request. The effect of domain similarity on spontaneous analogical explanation constitutes a relevant finding, especially given the lack of attention received by this dimension of similarity in behavioral studies and computer simulations of analogical retrieval.