Previous studies of analogical reasoning leave two important questions unanswered: (1) What does analogical reasoning consist of as a process? (2) What do analogy tests test? The purpose of the studies described in this paper was to investigate the process of analogical reasoning under conditions which control for hypothesized confounding effects of word association. The results suggest that approximately half the analogy items on current tests can be solved by word association; a new analogy test minimally soluble by word association was therefore constructed. Several other extraneous variables which may also be confounded with analogical reasoning were described.
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