Categories, Propositional Representations, and Schemas: Test of a Structural Hypothesis

Categories, scene schemas, and scene propositional representations were investigated by testing a structural hypothesis that states that recall for information within a representation increases as the number of types of interconnections and the strength of the interconnections within a representation increases. The hypothesis states that categories and scene schemas have the same types of interconnections, which are equal in strength, and these two types of representations have stronger interconnections than scene propositional representations. The hypothesis predicts equally high recall for information given a categorical or scene schema organization, and low recall for information given a scene propositional organization. Across two experiments, the predictions of the structural hypothesis were confirmed. The results are interpreted as showing that categories and scene schemas are structurally the same, whereas scene propositional representations are structurally different from categories and scene schemas.