Investigating the Effect of Analogical Processing on Mental Representations

My thesis focuses broadly on how memory may be influenced by performing analogical comparisons. I am interested in understanding how mapping objects between two domains based on a shared relational structure may influence how we encode and retrieve that information. When we use analogies to gain knowledge in our everyday thinking, we often make comparisons between two domains that highlights shared, relational roles, potentially at the expense of other information. Research on memory has indicated that how we encode information depends on the knowledge structures we have about a given scenario, such that events and objects that are relevant to our pre-existing knowledge representations are likely to be easily integrated, potentially at the cost of losing exact features of that information. Other research has shown that items in memory that compete during retrieval may influence each other's memory strength through an inhibitory mechanism. Across the two studies described here, I examined whether these memory phenomena are triggered by analogical mapping. I found that analogical mapping influenced memory, specific to those items that fit into a common relational category. I also discovered that memories for items sharing a relational structure could inhibit information that did not fit into that relational structure, suggesting that how we reason can influence how we recall and represent information.