Evidence of analogical re-representation from a change detection task

The flexibility to map similar, but non-identical relations, is a key characteristic of human analogical reasoning. Understanding how this flexibility is implemented is necessary for a complete accounting of analogical processes. The structure mapping theory of analogy addresses this issue by invoking re-representation—an online transformation of conceptually similar relational content that reveals potential partial identity matches between predicates. Despite the critical importance of re-representation to structure mapping, very little empirical work has validated the psychological reality of this mechanism, with the existing evidence being no more than suggestive. The present work investigates the likelihood of re-representation across two experiments using a novel change detection task. The resultant findings demonstrate precise evidence of representational change in relational content of analogs. Experiment 2 further explores the relationship between lower-order relational similarity and the likelihood of re-representation.