Structural similarity superiority in a free-recall reminding paradigm

International audienceThe high proportion of retrievals of situations sharing surface similarity in previous experiments gave rise to the view that surface similarity predominantly drives access. In contrast, we claim that the retrievals of those situations are due to the structural similarity they still preserved. We tested our alternative structural superiority hypothesis while isolating the influence of structural and surface similarity by assessing whether participants predominantly retrieve situations sharing only structural similarity (superficially dissimilar analogs) or situations sharing only surface similarity (superficially similar disanalogs). Contrary to previous experiments instructing participants to produce analogies, we used a free-recall reminding paradigm in which participants had to recall any situations a target cue reminded them of. Results demonstrated that a greater proportion of participants predominantly retrieved situations sharing only structural similarity than situations sharing only surface similarity. Results are discussed relatively to the current debate regarding the retrieval of analogs preserving or not surface similarity