Re-representation in comparison: Building an empirical case

Leading accounts of analogy based on structure mapping theory (Gentner 1983, 1989) give an important explanatory role to re-representation. Structural alignment is insufficiently flexible to account for human analogical processing if semantically compatible, but non-identically coded, representational elements are not permitted to match. A process of re-representation can selectively allow non-identical representational elements to be considered matches and placed in structural correspondence during comparison. However, re-representation is only a posited theoretical construct with minimal supporting evidence. An experimental paradigm called inference probing is introduced which offers a new level of empirical support for the psychological reality of re-representation. Behavioural results are presented that bear on accounts of analogy, similarity, knowledge representation and reasoning.