Modelling typical alphabetic analogical reasoning

A study investigating the way in which people solve alphabetic analogical reasoning tasks (cf Copycat; Hofstadter & Mitchell, 1995), revealed that participants tend to use the same basic strategy, which was modelled in the cognitive architecture ACT-R. Performance evaluations indicate an average goodness of fit of 66.75% and a 100% goodness of fit on a subset of problems for which participants were significantly more likely to produce a single 'typical' response (p<0.05). The model is discussed in the context of various features of human analogical reasoning which were observed in the study, and in relation to Hoftstadter and Mitchell's (1995) discussion of 'elegant' solutions to problems.