An Inhibitory Mechanism for Goal-Directed Analogical Mapping

Abstract

Theories of analogical thinking have differed\nin the roles they ascribe to processing goals as a\nsource of constraint on analogical mappings. W e\nreport an experiment that examines the impact of\nprocessing goals on subjects' mappings in (a) a\ntask involving generation of plot extensions for\nsoap opera scripts, and (b) an explicit m o p i n g task\nbased on characters in the scripts. The scripts were\nwritten so that the mappings for central characters\nwere four-ways ambiguous. Manipulations of\nsubjects' processing goals influenced their preferred\nm£q)pings, both in the plot-extension and mapping\ntasks. In the latter task, goal-irrelevant information\ncontributed to the resolution of m ^ p i n g s that were\nambiguous on the basis of goal-relevant\ninformation alone. T h e qualitative pattern of\nresults was successfully simulated using A C M E , a\nconstraint-satisfaction model of mapping, in which\nprocessing goals are assumed to control an\ninhibitory process of selective attention.\nProcessing goals attenuate the activation level of\ngoal-irrelevant information, reducing or even\neliminating its impact on mapping decisions.