Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We investigated whether training in how to encode the causal stnicture of problems would improve individual's use of analogies to previously encountered cases. Subjects were trained either in how to encode the causal structure of business cases or given a lecture of equal length on a variety of decision making procedures. They were then asked to study several business cases and their successful solution. One week later, when asked to solve new problems, subjects who were trained in causal analysis, compared to the control group, were more likely to use an appropriate analogy from the previously studied cases (positive transfer) and were less likely to use an inappropriate analogy (negative transfer). Further anaJyses showed that training in causal analysis increased subjects' ability to encode the causal structure of the problem and increased the likelihood of being reminded of the analogy. Thus, the ability to encode causal structure and use analogies appropriately is not responsive only to increasing domain knowledge, but can also be improved by general training in the identification and encoding of the central components of the causal structure of problems.