Abstract: This research studied the transfer of information maintenance effected by the structure-mapping analogy and the similar elements in reading. It included two experiments. In Experiment l, the researchers explored the transfer effected by the similar structures and the similar predicates between the source text and the target text.The results indicated that the structural similarity enhanced the maintenance of the target text significantly, whereas the predicate similarity was insignificant. In Experiment 2, it was explored whether prompting either the structural similarity or the predicate similarity between the two texts advanced the maintenance of the target text.The results showed that such effect did exist obviously in both cases. This research implied that both the process of structure-mapping analogy and the process of repeating the similar elements could advance the transfer of maintenance in reading.

Key words: reading, transfer, analogy, structure-mapping, similar factor