STRANG: A new model of concepts and analogy

This work describes a computational model that is an implementation of a theory of representational and conceptual change and analogical retrieval. This new model, called STRANG, shows how a representational change component can be efficiently included in a computational model based on the accepted structure-mapping theory of analogical retrieval. The type of representational change that STRANG introduces is called packing , involving changes at both the relational and attribute levels in order to facilitate analogical retrieval, and in computer simulations STRANG produces results that are both consistent with human experiments on representational change, as well as results that demonstrate the plausibility of packing above and beyond what has so far been observed in human experimental data.