title: Reviving inert knowledge: analogical abstraction supports relational retrieval of past events.
abstract: We present five experiments and simulation studies to establish late analogical abstraction as a new psychological phenomenon: Schema abstraction from analogical examples can revive otherwise inert knowledge. We find that comparing two analogous examples of negotiations at recall time promotes retrieving analogical matches stored in memory-a notoriously elusive effect. Another innovation in this research is that we show parallel effects for real-life autobiographical memory (Experiments 1-3) and for a controlled memory set (Experiments 4 and 5). Simulation studies show that a unified model based on schema abstraction can capture backward (retrieval) effects as well as forward (transfer) effects.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Northwestern University McCombs School of Business, The University of Texas at Austin Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, Northwestern University.
authors.forename: Dedre
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Gentner
authors.forename: Jeffrey
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Loewenstein
authors.forename: Leigh
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.forename: Kenneth D
authors.initials: KD
authors.lastname: Forbus