Soloway's work [1] might speak to you. In essence, Soloway referred to this association as "templates", in which we associate problems with those we've seen in

Soloway's work [1] might speak to you. In essence, Soloway referred to this association as "templates", in which we associate problems with those we've seen in the past. While the linked study points at it as a potential negative, you aren't far off in assuming its beneficial as well. When I teach Data Structures and AI courses, I refer it the phenomena as "neutralizing the problem" (borrowed for my years training martial arts). Again, the idea is to model the problem as something we've something seen before - because then, we have solutions for it! The biggest issue is knowing how to best model the problems so that we're not trying to shoehorn everything into a particularly inefficient solution. However, this is a "fun" bit of research, seeing which models best work with which problems. [1] https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/32/5010265/05010283.pdf https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/32/5010265/05010283.pdf