MAC/FAC: A Model of Similarity-Based Retrieval

By Kenneth D. Forbus, Dedre Gentner, K. Law. 1995

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

Citations in the corpus

Explanation in Human-AI Systems: A Literature Meta-Review, Synopsis of Key Ideas and Publications, and Bibliography for Explainable AI (2019, neutral): “(Clement, 1988; Eliot, 1986; Falkenhainer, Forbus, and Gentner, 1989; Forbus, Gentner, and Law, 1995; Gentner, Holyoak, and Kokinov, 2001; Hoffman, 1995; Spiro, Feltovich, Coulson, and Anderson, 1988)”
Avoiding Missed Opportunities in Managerial Life: Analogical Training More Powerful Than Individual Case Training (2000, background): “If people abstract general schemas or principles during learning, perhaps these principles can form the basis for experiencing similarities with new cases involving the same principles ( Forbus, Gentner, & Law, 1995 ).”
The Tools Challenge: Rapid Trial-and-Error Learning in Physical Problem Solving (2019, methodology): “To overcome this, SSUP includes structured priors and a mechanism for updating our beliefs about which actions are likely to be successful (e.g., Forbus, Gentner, & Law, 1995).”
A Transfer-in-Pieces Consideration of the Perception of Structure in the Transfer of Learning (2010, methodology): “…relevant surface features, as they reside in an observer’s psychological representation of the situations (see, e.g., Chi, Feltovich, & Glaser, 1981; Forbus et al., 1995; Fuchs, Fuchs, Finelli, Courey, & Hamlett, 2004; Fuchs et al., 2003; Gentner, Rattermann, & Forbus, 1993; Gick & Holyoak, 1980,…”
Reviving Inert Knowledge: Analogical Abstraction Supports Relational Retrieval of Past Events (2009, background): “To the extent that subsequent exemplars are encoded using the same relational structure, this uniform relational encoding will result in a larger number of relational matches with memory ( Forbus et al., 1995 ).”
Structure mapping in analogy and similarity. (1997, background): “The simulation "Many are called-but few are chosen" (MAC-FAC; Forbus et al., 1995) models this phenomenon with a two-stage system: The first stage (MAC) is an indiscriminate, computationally cheap search for any kinds of similarities in memory, and the second stage (FAC) carries out a structure…”
Nonintentional analogical inference in text comprehension (2007, methodology): “Our results may best be captured by a model like MAC/FAC ( Forbus et al., 1995 ), which assumes a parallel resonance-like process that finds potential memory matches, followed by a structure-mapping process that aligns (or rejects) these potential matches.”
On the benefits and pitfalls of analogies for innovative design : Ideation performance based on analogical distance, commonness, and modality of examples (2011, background): “It is well known in the psychological literature that retrieving far-field analogies is cognitively difficult; remindings tend to be significantly constrained by surface similarity [49], reducing the probability of retrieving potentially relevant surface dissimilar analogies.”
Assessing Elaborated Hypotheses: An Interpretive Case-Based Reasoning Approach (2003, methodology): “For example, if AHEAD receives a hypothesis concerning an organized crime takeover of postal service in some area, MAC/FAC would recognize that the overall structure of the hypothesis resembles the structure of industry takeovers, even though a postal service is a government organization, not an ind”
Metaphor is like analogy (2001, methodology): “The Structure-mapping Engine (SME) (Falkenhainer, Forbus, and Centner 1989; Forbus, Ferguson, and Centner 1994; Forbus, Centner, and Law 1995) uses a local-to-global 4 alignment process to arrive at a structural alignment of two representations.”
The career of metaphor. (2005, background): “In some cases, such matching elements may even undergo rerepresentation to improve the quality of the alignment—that is, implicit identities within the common system may be rendered explicit (e.g., Forbus et al., 1995; Kotovsky & Gentner, 1996; Yan, Forbus & Gentner, 2003).”