Relational complexity (RC) theory conceptualizes an individual's processing capacity and a task's complexity along a common ordinal metric. The authors describe the development of the Latin Square Task (LST) that assesses the influence of RC on reasoning. The LST minimizes the role of knowledge and storage capacity and thus refines the…

Three experiments investigated effects of complexity on 2- to 6-year-olds' understanding of a beam balance. Found that 2- to 4-year-olds succeeded on problems that entailed binary relations, but 5- and 6-year-olds also succeeded on problems that entailed ternary relations. Ternary relations tasks from other domains (transitivity and class…

This study examined the hypothesis that age-related increases in reasoning ability are associated with the ability to represent relations of increasing complexity, defined as the number of entities related. The study's purpose was to determine the extent to which this ability to process relations with three entities increased between ages 4 and 8…