Deconstructing analogy
  Analogy has been shown to be important in many key cognitive abilities,
including learning, problem solving, creativity and language change. For
cognitive models of analogy, the fundamental computational question is how its
inherent complexity (its NP-hardness) is solved by the human cognitive system.
Indeed, different models of analogical processing can be categorized by the
simplification strategies they adopt to make this computational problem more
tractable. In this paper, I deconstruct several of these models in terms of the
simplification-strategies they use; a deconstruction that provides some
interesting perspectives on the relative differences between them. Later, I
consider whether any of these computational simplifications reflect the actual
strategies used by people and sketch a new cognitive model that tries to
present a closer fit to the psychological evidence.
