Constraints on analogical reasoning: Working memory capacity or executive control?

Since people differ inter-individually in the effectiveness of their analogical reasoning, an important question deals with elementary cognitive parameters, which potentially constrain analogy-making. Among the candidate parameters that have been investigated, the capacity of working memory (WM) and executive control (EC) are the most widely recognized determinants of reasoning. An experiment, which utilizes a test of analogical reasoning on figural material and two versions of the n-back task, which imposes a load on both WM and EC, is presented. Results confirm that analogical reasoning is related to EC but they show that enlarging the WM load is not necessarily related to scores in the analogy test.