Page 271 - DCAP310_INTRODUCTION_TO_ARTIFICIAL_INTELLIGENCE_AND_EXPERT_SYSTEMS

Unit 14: Types of Learning

He is like a rock. This means he is steadfast and strong. Notes
She attended the celebrity roast. The person being roasted is being honored by people
making harmless jokes about him or her.

I feel like a fish out of water. This implies that you are not comfortable in your surroundings.
She was offended when I said she was as flaky as a snowstorm. That isn’t a very nice
comparison to make.

There are plenty of fish in the sea. Unless you really are a fish, this encourages you to
move on and find another potential mate.

She was as quiet as a mouse. It is hard to hear a mouse, so that means she was very quiet.
Bing Crosby had a velvet voice. Since voices are not made of velvet, this implies that his
voice was smooth and soothing.

Life is like a box of chocolates. This has many meanings and is a great analogy for life.
Analogy plays a significant role in problem solving such as, decision making, perception,
memory, creativity, emotion, explanation and communication. It lies behind basic tasks such as
the identification of places, objects and people, for example, in face perception and facial
recognition systems. It has been argued that analogy is “the core of cognition”. Specific analogical
language comprises exemplification, comparisons, metaphors, similes, allegories, and parables,
but not metonymy. Phrases like and so on, and the like, as if, and the very word like also rely on
an analogical understanding by the receiver of a message including them. Analogy is important
not only in ordinary language and common sense (where proverbs and idioms give many
examples of its application) but also in science, philosophy and the humanities. The concepts of
association, comparison, correspondence, mathematical and morphological homology,
homomorphism, iconicity, isomorphism, metaphor, resemblance, and similarity are closely
related to analogy. In cognitive linguistics, the notion of conceptual metaphor may be equivalent
to that of analogy.
Analogy has been studied and discussed since classical antiquity by philosophers, scientists and
lawyers. The last few decades have shown a renewed interest in analogy, most notably in
cognitive science.
In addition to the above general qualities, several further factors influence the success of an
explanatory analogy, including base specificity, transparency, and scope. Base specificity is the
degree to which the structure of the base domain is clearly understood. Transparency is the ease
with which the correspondences can be seen. Transparency is increased by similarities between
corresponding objects and is decreased by similarities between non corresponding objects. For
example, in 1986 Gentner and Cecile Toupin found that four-to six-year-old children succeeded
in transferring a story to new characters when similar characters occupied similar roles (e.g.,
squirrel [.arrowright] chipmunk; trout salmon), but they failed when the match was
cross-mapped, with similar characters in different roles (e.g., squirrel salmon; trout chipmunk).
The same pattern has been found with adults. Transparency also applies to relations. In 2001,
Miriam Bassok found that students more easily aligned instances of “increase” when both were
continuous (e.g., speed of a car and growth of a population) than when one was discrete (e.g.,
attendance at an annual event).

14.8.2 Methods Used to Investigate Analogical Learning

Much research on analogy in learning has been devoted to the effects of analogies on domain
understanding.

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