Episodic Memory
Relational and Item Encoding Task
Also called: Relational and Item-Specific Encoding task, RiSE task, RISE, relational and item-specific encoding paradigm, relational encoding task, item and associative recognition task
Judge single pictures as living or not and pairs by whether one could fit inside the other, then recognize the pictures and the pairs: compares memory after item-specific and relational encoding.
10-13 minUntimed
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Try it here first, with no account.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 2
- Evidence grade
- C
- Registered clinical studies
- 4
What it measures
Measures memory for pictures judged one at a time and pictures judged as pairs. Participants answer whether single pictures are living and whether one picture of a pair could fit inside the other, then pick out the pictures seen among new ones and the pairs seen among rearranged ones.
Constructs
- Relational encoding
- Item-specific encoding
- Item recognition
- Associative recognition
- Episodic memory
Research uses
- Schizophrenia and psychosis research on episodic memory
- Research on encoding and retrieval processes
- Aging and memory research
How the paradigm works
The Relational and Item Encoding Task compares memory for pictures studied one at a time with memory for pictures studied as pairs: the relational and item-specific encoding paradigm that Ragland and colleagues (2012) built into the RiSE task for schizophrenia research, a task selected by the CNTRICS initiative. Encoding is incidental, so nothing is said about memory. In item blocks, single pictures show for 2 seconds each and the participant answers whether each is living, an animal or a plant; in relational blocks, pairs show for 4 seconds each and the participant answers whether, in real life, one could fit inside the other. A 1-second blank follows each picture or pair, item and relational blocks alternate (2 of each, with 12 single pictures or 6 pairs), a 3-second screen announces each block, and the question stays on screen. A short practice of each question with feedback comes first. Then the item test shows the 24 single pictures and the 24 pictures of the pairs among 48 new ones, each answered Old or New with a confidence of sure, probably or guessing, and the pair test shows the 12 pairs as they were seen among 12 rearranged pairs, each joining the living picture of one pair with the made thing of another. Both tests have no time limit.
More about the paradigm
The main score is item recognition after relational encoding: d' for pictures seen in pairs against new pictures, with the log-linear correction, as Gold and colleagues (2012) reported the task's measures as d'. The task also reports d' after item-specific encoding, the difference between the two, associative recognition d', and hits minus false alarms for each, the index of Ragland and colleagues (2012). With their photographs and 3 blocks of each kind, their 73 healthy controls scored 0.87 after item-specific encoding, 0.84 after relational encoding and 0.58 on associative recognition. The pictures here are Noto Emoji, each pair one animal or plant and one made thing, and each session deals the pairs at random to being seen alone, seen as a pair or new, so across sessions every picture serves in every role. With 24 pictures in each condition and 12 pairs of each kind, one person's scores are best compared within a study. Scores support research and do not diagnose.
Scores
- Item Recognition d', Relational Encodingd'
- z(hit rate) for pictures seen in pairs minus z(false alarm rate) for new pictures, with the log-linear correction.
- Higher means better recognition of pictures studied as pairs
- Item Recognition d', Item-Specific Encodingd'
- z(hit rate) for pictures seen alone minus z(false alarm rate) for new pictures.
- Higher means better recognition of pictures studied alone
- Relational Minus Item-Specific d'd'
- Item recognition d' after relational encoding minus d' after item-specific encoding.
- Below 0 means pictures studied alone were recognized better
- Associative Recognition d'd'
- z(Together for pairs seen together) minus z(Together for rearranged pairs).
- Higher means better memory for which pictures went together
- Item Recognition Accuracy, Item-Specific Encoding%
- Hit rate for pictures seen alone minus the false alarm rate for new pictures.
- Higher is better
- Item Recognition Accuracy, Relational Encoding%
- Hit rate for pictures seen in pairs minus the false alarm rate for new pictures.
- Higher is better
- Associative Recognition Accuracy%
- Together for pairs seen together minus Together for rearranged pairs.
- Higher is better
- False Alarm Rate%
- New pictures answered Old.
- Lower is better
- Living Judgments Matching the Pictures%
- Answered living judgments that match whether the picture shows an animal or a plant.
- Under 0.75 is flagged for review
- Encoding Judgments Missedcount
- Pictures and pairs whose question was not answered while they were shown, of 36.
- Expected to be low
Use and evidence
2 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract. That ranks it 487 of 495 test families in our census. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 0 |
| 2024 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2 |
| 2022 | 0 |
| 2021 | 0 |
| 2020 | 1 |
| 2019 | 1 |
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2017 | 3 |
| 2016 | 2 |
| 2015 | 1 |
| 2014 | 0 |
| 2013 | 1 |
| 2012 | 0 |
| 2011 | 2 |
| 2010 | 1 |
| 2009 | 0 |
| 2008 | 0 |
| 2007 | 1 |
| 2006 | 0 |
| 2005 | 0 |
| 2004 | 0 |
| 2003 | 0 |
| 2002 | 0 |
| 2001 | 0 |
| 2000 | 0 |
Use grade E
Fewer than 30 papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade C
At least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 0
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 5
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 4
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on this task, not ConductCognition's version of it.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 3 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Pictures
- 52 pairs of Noto pictures, each one animal or plant and one made thing: 48 in the test and 4 in practice. Each session deals the 48 at random: 12 seen as single pictures, 12 seen as pairs and 24 new, half of each pairs in which one could fit inside the other.
- Encoding
- 2 item blocks of 12 single pictures, each for 2,000 ms and answered living or not, and 2 relational blocks of 6 pairs, each for 4,000 ms and answered whether one could fit inside the other, alternating, with a 1,000 ms blank after each and a 3,000 ms screen before each block. Nothing is said about memory.
- Item test
- The 24 single pictures and the 24 pictures of the pairs among 48 new ones, no more than 4 old or new in a row, each answered Old or New with a confidence of sure, probably or guessing, with no time limit.
- Pair test
- The 12 pairs as seen among 12 rearranged pairs, each joining the living picture of one pair with the made thing of another, no more than 3 of a kind in a row, answered Together or Not together, with no time limit.
- Delay
- None as standard; 0 to 300 seconds of true-or-false arithmetic as a setting.
- Scores
- Item recognition d' after relational and after item-specific encoding, each against the false alarm rate for new pictures, and associative d', with the log-linear correction; hits minus false alarms for each, as Ragland and colleagues (2012) scored the task.
- Practice
- 4 single pictures and 2 pairs with feedback.
The pictures, pairs and expected answers are ours; no RiSE picture or file is used, and this version runs 2 blocks of each kind where the source ran 3. Many of the pictures also appear in other picture tests, so run this test in a different session from other picture memory tests. The scores support research and do not diagnose.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: relational_item_encoding_item_test rows (one Old or New answer, with a confidence, per picture) and relational_item_encoding_pair_test rows (one Together or Not together answer per pair) from the scored run, with the encoding judgments and any delay arithmetic of the same run. Half of the pictures were seen and half of the pairs were seen together, so chance is 50%. Accuracy significantly below chance (one-sided exact binomial, p < .05) invalidates; accuracy not above chance over 10 or more answers is flagged. The same answer on 90% of the answers invalidates when accuracy is not above chance. Answers under 200 ms on at least half of 4 or more answers invalidate. Fewer than half of the item test pictures answered invalidates, and any other short run is flagged. More than a quarter of the encoding judgments left unanswered, living judgments that match the pictures less than 3 times in 4 over 12 or more answers, and a hit rate under 0.50 in either condition (the exclusion level of Ragland and colleagues 2012) are flagged. Delay arithmetic not done, or at or below chance over 10 or more answers, is flagged. A hidden tab withholds the percentile.
Why these rules
Half of the pictures of the item test were seen and half are new, and half of the pairs of the pair test were seen together, so guessing gives 50%: Accuracy significantly below chance (one-sided exact test, p < .05) cannot come from guessing; it means the response mapping was reversed or the task was not followed (Slick, Sherman and Iverson 1999 treat below-chance forced-choice performance as definite response bias). Chance-level accuracy can be a real result in impaired participants, so it is only flagged. One option on at least 90% of answered trials, when the correct options are balanced and accuracy is not above chance, means the answers did not depend on the items (the task counterpart of long-string responding in surveys; Curran 2016). An answer under 200 ms is faster than a simple visual reaction, so it cannot reflect the item. Following response-time effort screening for untimed tests (Wise and Kong 2005), the session is invalid only when at least half the answers are that fast. The judgments during encoding make the pictures processed alone or as pairs; many missed judgments, or living judgments that do not match the pictures, mean the encoding may not have been done as asked. A hidden tab lets the study, delay or response timers run without the participant, so a percentile is withheld after one.
No percentile. Scores and quality flags only.
Running this test
Settings you can change
| Setting | Standard | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Arithmetic before the recognition tests (seconds) | 0 | 0 to 300 |
Yearly plans can change settings within these limits. Free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Need a setting this test does not have?
Devices and languages
- Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. Participant devices
- Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- No percentile. Scores and quality flags only. How norms work
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the Relational and Item Encoding Task in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Ragland et al., 2012), with the standard settings (arithmetic before the recognition tests (seconds): 0). The main score was item recognition d', relational encoding (z(hit rate) for pictures seen in pairs minus z(false alarm rate) for new pictures, with the log-linear correction).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Ragland, J. D., Ranganath, C., Barch, D. M., Gold, J. M., Haley, B., MacDonald, A. W., Silverstein, S. M., Strauss, M. E., Yonelinas, A. P., & Carter, C. S. (2012). Relational and Item-Specific Encoding (RISE): Task development and psychometric characteristics. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 38(1), 114-124. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbr146The procedure: living judgments on single pictures for 2 s, fit-inside judgments on pairs for 4 s, alternating blocks, then item and associative recognition scored as hits minus false alarms.
- Gold, J. M., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., Dakin, S., Luck, S. J., MacDonald, A. W., Ragland, J. D., Ranganath, C., Kovacs, I., Silverstein, S. M., & Strauss, M. (2012). Clinical, functional, and intertask correlations of measures developed by the Cognitive Neuroscience Test Reliability and Clinical Applications for Schizophrenia Consortium. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 38(1), 144-152. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbr142The three measures reported as d'.
- Ragland, J. D., Ranganath, C., Harms, M. P., Barch, D. M., Gold, J. M., Layher, E., Lesh, T. A., MacDonald, A. W., Niendam, T. A., Phillips, J., Silverstein, S. M., Yonelinas, A. P., & Carter, C. S. (2015). Functional and neuroanatomic specificity of episodic memory dysfunction in schizophrenia. JAMA Psychiatry, 72(9), 909-916. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2015.0276An imaging version, and why encoding answers are recorded but not scored as right or wrong.
- Strauss, M. E., McLouth, C. J., Barch, D. M., Carter, C. S., Gold, J. M., Luck, S. J., MacDonald, A. W., Ragland, J. D., Ranganath, C., Keane, B. P., & Silverstein, S. M. (2014). Temporal stability and moderating effects of age and sex on CNTRaCS task performance. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(4), 835-844. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbt089Retest stability of the task's measures.
Source papers
- Ragland JD, Ranganath C, Barch DM, Gold JM, Haley B, MacDonald AW, Silverstein SM, Strauss ME, Yonelinas AP, Carter CS (2012). Relational and Item-Specific Encoding (RISE): Task development and psychometric characteristics. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 38(1):114-124.N 73, Adults
- No normative data for this task.Paradigm source, N/A
Questions
How long does the Relational and Item Encoding Task take?
About 10 to 13 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Untimed test: runs on desktops, laptops, tablets and phones. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
Item Recognition d', Relational Encoding, Item Recognition d', Item-Specific Encoding, Relational Minus Item-Specific d', Associative Recognition d', Item Recognition Accuracy, Item-Specific Encoding, Item Recognition Accuracy, Relational Encoding, Associative Recognition Accuracy, False Alarm Rate, Living Judgments Matching the Pictures and Encoding Judgments Missed. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the Relational and Item Encoding Task used in research?
2 papers from 2021 to 2025 name it in their title or abstract. That ranks it 487 of 495 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade E). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.22.0, counted 3 November 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the Relational and Item Encoding Task have?
In the published research, 0 papers report its test-retest reliability and 4 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade C in the ConductCognition test census).
Does it report a percentile?
No. Scores and quality flags only.
Which settings can a researcher change?
Arithmetic before the recognition tests (seconds) (0 to 300). Settings can be changed on yearly plans; free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Which languages can participants use?
Participants can take this test in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
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