Nashville, TN. Cognitive Modeling of Analogy Events in Physics Problem Solving From Examples

Understanding how analogy is used in problem solving is an important problem in cognitive science. This paper describes a model of using worked solutions to solve new problems, in terms of structure-mapping processes in the Companions cognitive architecture. The Educational Testing Service independently evaluated the flexibility of the system by using AP Physics problems that were systematically varied to test different types of transfer. We also show that the model provides an explanation for many of the analogy events in VanLehn’s (1998) analysis of the use of analogy by student