Binary and Ternary Analogy by Children: Testing the Role of Insufficiently Developed Working Memory Capacity (WMC) Executive Functions

Abstract

Background: Ghanaian classroom teachers face consistent challenges asking children to relate classroom interactions with the development of connected thinking in areas such as mathematical proficiency and reading comprehension. Inculcating inference-making ability in children places a cognitive burden on the executive control of the working memory capacity (WMC). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between WMC and executive function, with specific reference to how inhibition as executive control influenced active retrieval and goal maintenance in the context of analogy distraction making. Method: Two hundred and eighty-nine kindergarten and primary school children aged between 3-11 years participated in this study. Subjects were tested on four variables on binary and ternary analogy making with distractions. Results: Even younger children were capable of attending to and making mapping relations. However, they were less likely to overcome misleading object surface similarity and to maintain relational structure especially when an additional level of complexity was imposed. Conclusion: This was attributed to insufficiently develop executive function constraints, especially inhibition, which was identified as the predicting cause of children’s difficulty in binary and ternary analogies.