A series of three experiments was conducted for the purposes of (1) clarifying problems of previous research on the relationship between working memory capacity and performance on figural analogy tasks, and (2) exploring developmental issues concerning executive strategies, working memory capacity, and perceptual processing. Directly manipulating the amount of available memory capacity a subject has while solving figural analogy problems, the first experiment required 29 fifth-grade children in Ontario, Canada to solve nondegenerate and semidegenerate figural analogy problems while counting backwards aloud by ones from 10 to 0. The second experiment investigated the possibility that children with a low level of working memory capacity who are unable to solve a high-level problem may lack necessary task-specific perceptual skills or cognitive operations. A random sample of 44 children selected from junior-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first-grade classes were presented with a series of nondegenerate figural analogy problems, broken down into prerequisite tasks. The third experiment tested the possibility that failure of subjects to solve such problems was due to lack of understanding of the nature of the conjunctive response concept underlying the bidimensional comparison strategy. A total of 24 first-grade children were administered pretest, treatment, and posttest sets of pictures of people and/or geometric figural analogy problems. Subjects were read names of features required for a correct conjunctive response. Treatment also consisted of a verbal facilitation procedure. Results indicate that young children have difficulty applying analogical reasoning to figural problems because of insufficient working memory capacity after carrying out the encoding elements of the task and because of perceptual encoding errors. (RH)