La Teoría de la Asignación Categorial Sobre el Pensamiento Analógico: un Desafío a la Teoría de la Proyección de Estructura

Abstract

The dominant theory of analogical thinking since the 1980s is the structure mapping theory. In this paper, a new theory about reasoning by analogy is presented: the category assignment theory. It is argued that this theory is able to explain better than the first how a specific type of analogies are interpreted and evaluated, namely, those in which the facts compared constitute examples of a schema-governed category. The arguments presented are accompanied by brief descriptions of the studies that provided support for the new theory. The responses of the structure-mapping theory to the objections raised by the category proposal are discussed.