Motion as manipulation: implementation of force-motion analogies by event-file binding and action planning.

Tool-improvisation analogies are structure-mapping inferences implemented, in many species, by event-file binding and pre-motor action planning. These processes act on multi-modal representations of currently perceived situations and eventuate in motor acts that can be directly evaluated for success or failure; they employ implicit representations of force-motion relations encoded by the pre-motor system and do not depend on explicit, language-like representations of relational concepts. A detailed reconstruction of the analogical reasoning steps involved in Rutherford's and Bohr's development of the first quantized-orbit model of atomic structure is used to show that human force-motion analogies can in general be implemented by these mechanisms. This event-file manipulation model of the implementation of force-motion analogies is distinguished from the standard view that structure-mapping analogies require the manipulation of explicit, language-like representations of relational concepts.