Bridging the "retrieval gap": Familiar schema-governed categories support reminding of disparate events

We investigated the role of surface and structural similarities in the retrieval of everyday life events by means of a novel experimental paradigm in which participants could report any memories that came to mind while reading anecdotes instantiating familiar Schema-Governed Categories (SCGs, e.g., making up an excuse). Based on the idea that the availability of memories sharing both surface and structural similarities may conceal participants' ability to retrieve purely structural matches, we presented participants with short narratives describing associations of surfaces and structures which are either usually encountered (e.g., making up an excuse not to hang out with someone, Experiment 1) or less frequent in everyday life (e.g., making up an excuse not to go to an art exhibition, Experiment 2). The results from Experiment 1 replicated the traditional finding that when they are available, memories combining surface and structural similarities prevail over purely structural matches. However, Experiment 2 revealed that when a more direct competition was set between purely surface and purely structural matches, structurally based retrievals were the most frequent. Experiment 3 showed that target cues deprived of any surface features (e.g., making up an excuse) elicited more retrievals of usual than unusual surface/structure combos, suggesting the influence of association frequency in analogical retrieval. The data provide the first line of evidence suggesting that participants rely on highly familiar SGCs to process structural encodings and retrieve past experiences based on structural similarities. We discuss the implications of these findings regarding current theories of analogical retrieval holding that this process is predominantly guided by surface similarities.