Empirical Evidence for Derivational Analogy

Abstract

Analogical problem solving is mostly described as transfer of a source solution to a target problem based on the structural correspondences (mapping) between source and target. Derivational analogy proposes an alternative view: A target problem is solved by replaying a remembered problem solving episode. Authors postulate that both transformational (TA) and derivational analogy (DA) are problem solving strategies realized by human problem solvers. The first problem corresponds to finding an Eulerian trail in a graph, the second to finding a Hamiltonian cycle. The authors modified these problems such that the underlying graphs are isomorphic. But two subjects reporting DA gave the correct mapping and one subject reporting TA did not give the correct mapping. But this subject was the only of the ten which could not produce a correct solution of the target: the author tried to draw the graph in exactly the same layout which was given for the source solution and thereby missed one arc.