In learning a new cognitive skill, novices usually are required to solve many instructional examples. Under these circumstances, people often think back to an earlier example that the current problem reminds them of and use that earlier example and its solution to help them solve the current problem (e.g., Anderson, Farrell, & Sauers, 1984; Novick, 1986; Reed, Dempster, & Ettinger, 1985; Ross, 1984). This use of earlier examples has been suggested as a useful problemsolving heuristic (e.g., Polya, 1945; Wickelgren, 1974), and making analogies from earlier problems is considered by many researchers to be an important part of learning (e.g., Anderson, Farrell, & Sauers, 1984; Carbonell, 1983; Dellarosa, 1985; Gentner, 1980; Pirolli & Anderson, 1985; Reed et al., 1985; Ross, 1984; Winston, 1980).

My research in this area has focused on these remindings, their occurrence, their use, and their effects. Besides the effects that these remindings and their use may have on solving the current problem, they may be of interest for two additional reasons. First, as I will argue in more detail later, these remindings may affect performance not only on the current problem but on later problems as well. That is, remindings may affect what is learned. Second, the study of these relatively simple cases may provide particularly useful information about a number of important basic processes. Remindings may be useful not only because they occur and affect performance but also because they help us to examine similarity-based retrieval of relevant information, reconstruction, analogy, and generalization.