Analogies gone awry

I can't fairly critique a study based on a newspaper story, but the example provided by the lead researcher to the New York Times suggests a badly flawed experiment. The so-called concrete example is not concrete at all. It doesn't engage the physical intuition of the subject at all. Instead, it requires a more complex decoding than the symbolic example. Furthermore, there is nothing at all mathematical in the example; it's a memory game.

If the rest of the testing was similar, this study does not have the meaning its authors and the Times have claimed for it.

This is not to say that I'm a fan of manipulatives beyond very early ages. I'm not. I just don't think this study, as I understand it, bears on them.

Update (9/5/2011): Added missing 'all'.