Nonrelational and relational encoding conditions differed
only with regard to task instructions. In the nonrelational
encoding block, participants were instructed to make decisions
about the presented faces and houses separately, indicating
whether each face was male or female and whether
each house was an inside or outside view, pressing the appropriate
one of four buttons. In the relational encoding
block, participants were instructed to make decisions about
the faces and houses jointly, indicating whether they believed
‘‘the person is visiting the house’’ or ‘‘the person is an
inhabitant of the house,’’ pressing the appropriate one of two
buttons. There were no right or wrong answers to participants’
decisions; the task instructions were solely designed
to encourage or discourage participants to create a memory
representation of the relation between items