Why should you care about a 1980 study on analogies? Because it still explains why students don’t always transfer what they’ve learned to new situations—and what we can do about it.
In this classic paper, Mary Gick and Keith Holyoak showed that people often fail to apply a known solution from one context (like a military story) to another (a medical problem) unless they’re cued to see the connection.
When participants generated their own solutions to the initial story (Experiment 3), they were far more likely to remember and apply it later—a great example of the generation effect: we remember and reuse what we’ve actively created ourselves.
Takeaways for teaching:
- Don’t assume transfer happens automatically. Students may understand content but fail to recognize when it applies elsewhere.
- Make the connections visible. Prompt them to compare examples and identify the shared underlying principle.
- Use the generation effect. Ask students to come up with their own examples, solutions, or analogies before showing them yours—this deepens encoding and boosts later transfer.
- Vary the surface details. Present multiple examples that look different but rely on the same concept to strengthen analogical mapping.
In short: learning sticks—and transfers—when students actively build and revisit their own mental bridges between ideas.
Read the full article online:
Gick, M. L., & Holyoak, K. J. (1980). Analogical problem solving. Cognitive Psychology, 12, 306–355. https://pdf.retrievalpractice.org/transfer/Gick_Holyoak_1980.pdf