Catrambone R, Jones C M, Jonides J, Seifert C
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 30332, USA.
Mem Cognit. 1995 May;23(3):368-73. doi: 10.3758/bf03197237.
People possess implicit theories about the motion of objects, theories that are often incorrect. When asked to predict the path of an object emerging from a curved tube, for example, people often say that the object will continue to follow a curved path. However, when solving a problem that reminds them of a familiar previous instance, people often reason by analogy to the instance. In this study, we show that a previous instance must be very superficially similar to a problem in order to be used as an analogy; otherwise, people will use their implicit theories as the basis of their reasoning.
