Bridging the Divide Between the Experimental and the Naturalistic Traditions

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A wealth of experimental studies have demonstrated that analogous situations are seldom retrieved from memory when they do not share similar elements with the target situation being processed. More naturalistic observational studies, however, are revealing a profusion of distant analogies, thus suggesting that retrieval is not invariably constrained by superficial similarity. We begin by discussing previous attempts to explain out this inconsistency in terms of the alleged artificiality of experimental tasks and materials. Next, we review our own attempts to settle this debate by means of a hybrid paradigm that retains the ecological validity of naturalistic studies, but without sacrificing the methodological control of the experimental tradition. In line with traditional findings, our results demonstrate a strong effect of superficial similarity during the retrieval of naturally acquired situations as diverse as plots of popular movies, highly publicized political affairs, and different kinds of autobiographical episodes. We conclude by reassessing the debate about the adaptive nature of the surface bias in analogical retrieval, and discuss the implications of this diagnosis for alleviating the problem of inert knowledge.