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Analogy and similarity are often assumed to be distinct psychological processes. In contrast to this position, the authors suggest that both similarity and analogy involve a process of structural alignment and mapping, that is, that similarity is like analogy. In this article, the authors first describe the structure-mapping process as it has been worked out for analogy. Then, this view is extended to similarity, where it is used to generate new predictions. Finally, the authors explore broader implications of structural alignment for psychological processing.

Abstract: Cognitive categories in the geographic realm appear to manifest certain special features as contrasted with categories for objects at surveyable scales. We have argued that these features reflect specific ontological characteristics of geographic objects. This paper presents hypotheses as to the nature of the features mentioned, reviews previous empirical work on geographic categories, and presents the results of pilot experiments that used English-speaking subjects to test our hypotheses. Our experiments show geographic categories to be similar to their non-geographic counterparts in the ways in which they generate instances of different relative frequencies at different levels. Other tests, however, provide preliminary evidence for the existence of important differences in subjects ’ categorizations of geographic and non-geographic objects, and suggest further experimental work especially with regard to the role in cognitive categorization of different types of objectboundaries at different scales.

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The current study examined the causal status effect (weighing cause features more than effect features in categorization) in children. Adults (Study 1) and 79-year-old children (Study 2) learned descriptions of novel animals, in which one feature caused two other features. When asked to determine which transfer item was more likely to be an example of the animal they had learned, both adults and children preferred an animal with a cause feature and an effect feature rather than an animal with two effect features. This study is the rst direct demonstration of the causal status effect in children. # 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Children aged 5 to 11 years and a comparison group of adults were presented with two instances where the behaviour of a computational object was contrary to what might normally be expected of such a device. In both instances findings are discussed with regard to children’s understanding of a computer program and resulting computational behaviour generally. In the first study, children viewed a film featuring a number of robots either acting as traditionally programmed devices or, alternatively, with apparent intentionality. We examine to what extent, if at all, children were aware of this difference. Findings indicated that although the younger children mentioned other alleged differences between the robots, the issue of different loci of control was not a salient one. In the second study, children were encouraged to type two kinds of questions into a computer. The first kind (simple maths questions) required a general solution procedure commonly accessible to a computational object. The second (details of a biographical nature) did not. With respect to the first as well as the second kind of questions the computer

Analogy and similarity are often assumed to be distinct psychological processes. In contrast to this position, the authors suggest that both similarity and analogy involve a process of structural alignment and mapping, that is, that similarity is like analogy. In this article, the authors first describe the structure-mapping process as it has been worked out for analogy. Then, this view is extended to similarity, where it is used to generate new predictions. Finally, the authors explore broader implications of structural alignment for psychological processing. Analogy and similarity are central in cognitive processing. They are often viewed as quite separate: Analogy is a clever, sophisticated process used in creative discovery, whereas similarity is a brute perceptual process that we share with the entire animal kingdom. This view of similarity has important implications for the way we model human thinking, because similarity is demonstrably important across many areas of cognition. We store experiences in categories largely on the basis of their similarity to a category representation or to stored exemplars (Smith & Medin, 1981). In transfer, new problems are solved using procedures taken

An integrated representation of large-scale space, or cognitive map, called PLAN is presented that attempts to address a broader spectrum of issues than has previously been attempted in a single model. Rather than examining wayfinding as a process separate from the rest of cognition, one of the fundamental goals of this work is to examine how the wayfinding process is integrated into general cognition. One result of this approach is that the model is "heads-up", or scene-based, because it takes advantages of the properties of the human visual system and particularly the visual system's split into two pathways. The emphasis on the human location or "where " system is new to cognitive mapping and is part of an attempt to synthesize prototype theory, associative networks and location together in a connectionist system. Not all of PLAN is new, however. Many of its parts have analogues in one or another pre-existing theory. What makes PLAN unique is the integration the various components into a coherent whole, and the capacity of this resulting system to speak to a wide range of constraints. Our approach emphasizes adaptiveness; thus our focus on such issues such as the ease of use and the efficiency of learning. The

The literature on concept development is highly contentious because there is a lot at stake. The processes that give rise to categories are at the very core of how we understand human cognition. In broad strokes, the debate is about whether categories reflect internal representations that are highly stable symbolic proposition-like and manipulated via logical operators or, whether they are probabilistic, context-dependent, and derived from bundles of correlated features and ordinary processes of perceiving and remembering (for reviews, see, Komatsu, 1992; Murphy & Medin, 1989; E. Smith, 1989; E. Smith & Medin, 1981. The literature appears to cycle through these two classes of accounts, advancing with each pass through but never quite leaving these two general points of view. Many of the contentious issues in the developmental literature on concepts and categories are variants of this debate. Accordingly, this review begins with a brief history of theories of categories. This is as history of back-and-forth transitions between a focus on more the more stable and the more probabilistic aspects of categories and it is a debate that is not resolved. However, by either view, categories result from internal representations that capture the structure in the world. Accordingly, the review of the developmental literature is organized with respect to recent advances in understanding outside-the-mind factors that organize and recruit the cognitive processes that create categories: the statistical regularities in the learning environment, the cognitive tasks and the nested time scales of the internal processes they recruit, and the body which is the interface between the external world and cognition. Back – and – forth theories. 2 Traditionally, categories are viewed as discrete bounded things that are stable over time and context. In this view, categories are enduringly real, object-like, truly out there in the world and also in our heads. Thus, theorists in this tradition write about categories being acquired, discovered, and possessed. The boundedness and stability expected of categories is well exemplified in the following quote from Keil (1994): Shared mental structures are assumed to be constant across repeated categorizations of the same set of instances and different from other categorizations. When I think

The importance of being interpreted: grounded words and