PAPER IN PROGRESS Representation of Elements and Relations across Informational Structures: Evidence for General Cognitive Mechanisms of Feature Processing

Previous studies using a categorical recognition task (Sloutsky & Yarlas, 2000a, 2000b; Yarlas & Sloutsky, 2000) elicited three reliable findings in feature processing of arithmetic equations: 1) participants were capable of representing both elementary and relational features of equations, 2) elements and relations were processed serially, with elements processed prior to relations, and 3) participants exhibited an elementrelation response-competition, such that responses took longest to recognition items for which elements but not relations were similar to study items. The two reported experiments examined whether these findings would replicate for other types of informational structures (i.e., propositional logic and spatial arrangements) to determine the generality of these phenomena.