What makes an analogy difficult? The effects of order and causal structure on analogical mapping.

In 4 experiments, the author tested 2 factors that affect the difficulty of analogies: order of presentation of information and causal structure. Experiments 1, 2, and 4 showed robust order effects for the positioning of sentences-sentence pairs in a variety of mapping problems. Experiments 2, 3, and 4 revealed the effects of causal structure in these analogies. Experiment 3 showed that the beneficial effects of causal structure are most marked in thematic, mapping problems presented in a casual question-answering context. Experiment 4 dealt with the interaction between order and causal structure and showed that order effects occur only in the presence of causal structure. Of all the analogy models in the literature, the incremental analogy machine is the best predictor of these results.