Instead the theory contends that an analogy alerts the hearer to a similarity in the relationships between objects in a domain.
Gentner provides the following table to summarize the different types of domain comparison above: "Part of our understanding about analogy is that it conveys a system of connected knowledge, not a mere assortment of independent facts.
[6] The process of analogy then involves: In general, it has been found that people prefer analogies where the two systems correspond highly with each other (e.g. have similar relationships across the domains as opposed to just having similar objects across domains) when these people try to compare and contrast the systems.
Children improve in their ability to identify this relationship when they have given relational labels, such as 'baby', 'mommy', and 'daddy'[9](or, in the box example, the words smallest, middle and largest).
Research has found that apes, who have limited language abilities, are also able to reason relationally, but this only occurs when base and target are highly aligned.
[6] Similar effects also occur if one's working memory is under a high cognitive load at the time (e.g., the person is trying to reason through an analogy while also keeping a word in the mind).
[5] When people establish structural alignment between two domains that are being compared, they attempt to identify as many similarities between the systems as possible and maintain a one-to-one correspondence between elements (i.e., objects, properties, and relationships).
Research suggests children are capable of using comparisons in order to learn abstract patterns, but this sometimes requires prompting from another.
[9] To provide support for this claim, researchers taught 3- and 4-year-olds a simple relationship by showing them a series of pictures.
After seeing the pictures and some having been prompted to compare, the children were tested on whether or not they had learned the abstract pattern (i.e., a ‘toma’ is a triad of matching animals).
[9] This is critical in their cognitive development as continuing to focus attention on specific objects would reduce children's ability to learn abstract patterns and reason analogically.
[9] Interestingly, some researchers have proposed that children's basic cognitive abilities (i.e., working memory and inhibitory control) do not drive this relational shift.
Instead, it is driven by their relational knowledge, such as having labels for the objects that make the relationships more explicit (see previous section).
[6] Additionally, research has identified several factors that may increase the likelihood that a child may spontaneously engage in comparison and learn an abstract relationship, without the need for prompts.