Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

In a previous study (Hickman & Laikin, 1990), we introduced a within-trial analogy mechanism called internal analogy that transfers both success and failure experiences between corresponding parts of the search tree for a single problem. In this paper, we describe powerful extensions to the learning procedure and their consequences on problem solving behavior First, we explain how our similarity metric can be naturally augmented to provide a more flexible partial match. To overcome the need for a static measure, however, we propose a mechanism that learns the appropriate level of partial match through feedback from previous analogical reasoning. Second, we show how this partial match mechanism controls the problem solver's search. Protocol dau from a subject working in a geometry theorem-proving domain provide support for the psychological fidelity of the extended internal analogy model.