Analogy

Analogy: is a cognitive of transferring information ornmeaning from a particular subject to another, or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. The term analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often a similitarity, as in the biological notion of analogy.

Analogy plays a significant role in problem solving, as well as decision making, argumentation, perception, generalization, memory, creativity,    prediction, emotion, explanation, conceptualization and communication. It lies behind basic tasks such as the identification of places, objects and people, for example, in face perception and facial recognition systems. It has been argued that analogy is "the core of cognition". 

If children are able to make analogies between the spelling patterns in words, this would have important consequences for theories of reading development, as a child who knew a word like beak could use analogy to read new words like peak and bean. A study is reported which compared the ability of children at three different reading levels to use analogy in reading both real and nonsense words. The results showed that even very young children can successfully use analogy to decode new words. This finding suggests that analogy has a role to play in the initial stages of reading acquisition.