Research Center for Mind, Brain and Behavior, University of Granada, Granada, Spain.
Department of Psychology, University of Jaen, Jaen, Spain.
PLoS One. 2019 Feb 12;14(2):e0211881. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0211881. eCollection 2019.
Analogical reasoning is a complex cognitive activity that involves access and retrieval of pre-existing knowledge in order to find a suitable solution. Prior work has shown that analogical transfer and reasoning can be influenced by unconscious activation of relevant information. Based on this idea, we report two experiments that examine whether reduced access to relevant information in memory may further disrupt analogical reasoning unwittingly. In both experiments, we use an adaptation of the retrieval practice paradigm [1] to modulate memory accessibility of potential solutions to a subsequent set of analogy problems of the type 'A is to B as C is to ?'. Experiment 1 showed a retrieval-induced impairment in analogical problem solving. Experiment 2 replicated this finding and demonstrated that it cannot be due to the deliberative episodic retrieval of the solutions to the analogies. These findings, predictable from an inhibitory framework of memory control, provide a new focus for theories of analogical transfer and highlight the importance of unconscious memory processes that may modulate problem solving.
类比推理是一种复杂的认知活动，需要访问和检索预先存在的知识，以找到合适的解决方案。先前的研究表明，类比迁移和推理可以受到相关信息无意识激活的影响。基于这个想法，我们报告了两项实验，以检验记忆中相关信息的获取减少是否会无意识地进一步破坏类比推理。在这两项实验中，我们使用了检索练习范式的一种变体[1]来调节随后一组类比问题（类型为“A 之于 B 犹如 C 之于？”）中潜在解决方案的记忆可及性。实验 1 表明，类比问题解决中的检索会导致损伤。实验 2 复制了这一发现，并表明这不能归因于对类比解决方案的深思熟虑的情景式检索。这些发现可以从记忆控制的抑制框架中预测，为类比迁移的理论提供了新的焦点，并强调了无意识记忆过程可能调节问题解决的重要性。
