Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Relational reasoning is central to much of human-unique cognition including artistic metaphor, scientific analogy. Whilemuch research has addressed the process of relational reasoning, the conditions under which relational reasoning is en-gaged in at all remains under-explored.This work examines the relationship between dimensions on which stimuli vary and the likelihood that these stimuli willbe processed relationally by adults. We use a modified relational-match-to-sample paradigm: One of the two choicescontains a relational match with the target, the other contains a partial object match. Changing dimensions on which thestimuli vary dramatically effects the likelihood that adults process them relationally (i.e. make relational matches) - from56% when stimuli vary on shape and color to 98% when stimuli vary on size alone. This is despite the relational contentof the task remaining identical throughout.We discuss implications of these results for designing stimuli, and for theories of relational reasoning generally.