Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Research has long shown that retrieving semantically distant analogs from long-term memory is difficult, whereas retrieving near analogs is relatively easy, a limitation viewed as a major constraint on cross-domain transfer. An alternative route may lie in the invention of analogs. We report two experiments comparing the effects of surface similarity on analog retrieval and analog invention. In Experiment 1, using a production paradigm, participants were presented with simple events drawn from familiar schemas. In the retrieval condition, they recalled analogous events; in the invention condition, they generated them. Results showed that retrieving distant analogs was difficult, whereas inventing them was relatively easy. Experiment 2 replicated this pattern using materials with larger and more complex relational structures and a hybrid paradigm that controlled the availability of intra- and inter-domain analogs in memory, while enabling clearer discrimination between retrieved and invented analogs.