Dissociated contributions of working memory and inhibitory control to children's and adults' analogical reasoning: Analogical strategies matter

Wei Shao; Haichun Zhou; Yue Qi; Zejia Zhu; Tianci Zhang; Yiran Chen; Yinghe Chen; Xiao Yu

doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105950

Dissociated contributions of working memory and inhibitory control to children's and adults' analogical reasoning: Analogical strategies matter

J Exp Child Psychol. 2024 May 11:244:105950. doi: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105950. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Wei Shao¹, Haichun Zhou¹, Yue Qi², Zejia Zhu³, Tianci Zhang¹, Yiran Chen¹, Yinghe Chen², Xiao Yu⁴

Affiliations

¹ Department of Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Forestry University, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, People's Republic of China.
² School of Developmental Psychology, Faculty of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, Haidian District, Beijing 100875, People's Republic of China.
³ The Thacher School, Ojai, CA 93023, USA.
⁴ Department of Psychology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Beijing Forestry University, Haidian District, Beijing 100083, People's Republic of China. Electronic address: yx0903yingzhong@163.com.

PMID: 38735221
DOI: 10.1016/j.jecp.2024.105950

Abstract

This study investigated whether and how each component of working memory (WM) and inhibitory control (IC) is related to analogical reasoning. Specifically, the mediating roles of analogical strategies were examined and compared across children and adults. In total, 79 children (50 girls; M ± SD = 8.43 ± 0.59 years old) and 77 adults (35 female; 19.44 ± 0.82 years old) were administered tests of WM, IC, and analogical reasoning. In addition, participants' eye movement data during the analogical reasoning task were collected to classify the analogical strategies. The results showed that the semantic-constraint strategy completely mediated the relationship between WM (rather than IC) and analogical reasoning for children. However, for adults, the project-first strategy partially mediated the association between IC (rather than WM) and analogical reasoning. These findings reveal the dissociated roles of WM and IC in analogical reasoning through analogical strategies for children and adults and highlight the importance of analogical strategies.

Keywords: Adults; Analogical reasoning; Children; Eye-tracking; Inhibitory control; Strategy; Working memory.