Acquisition and Transfer of Simultaneous Oddity

Berryman, Robert; Cumming, William W.; Cohen, Leila R.; Johnson, Daniel F.

doi:10.2466/pr0.1965.17.3.767

Cited by 65 publications

(68 citation statements)

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“…Because the words theta and upsilon deviated from the familiar word pi, the subjects apparently ''responded away from'' or excluded the previously positive ⌸ and instead selected the previously negative ⌰ or ⌼. Although the finding supported an earlier study by Vincent-Smith, Bricker, and Bricker (1974), it contradicted the commonly held belief that subjects learn the positive relation between a given sample or discriminative stimulus and the correct alternative but not the negative relation between the same sample and the incorrect alternative (see, e.g., Berryman, Cumming, Cohen, & Johnson, 1965;Carter & Werner, 1978;Skinner, 1950). Dixon's (1977) study demonstrated that subjects performing relational learning tasks may be capable of learning not only what is correct but also what is incorrect.…”

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confidence: 53%

Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Kastak

Schusterman

2002

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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Experiments have shown that human and nonhuman subjects are capable of performing new arbitrary stimulus-stimulus relations without error. When subjects that are experienced with matchingto-sample procedures are presented with a novel sample, a novel comparison, and a familiar comparison, most respond by correctly selecting the novel comparison in the presence of the new sample. This exclusion paradigm was expanded with two California sea lions that had previously formed two 10-member equivalence classes in a matching-to-sample procedure. Rather than being presented with a novel sample on a given trial, the sea lions were presented with a randomly selected familiar member of one class as the sample. One of the comparisons was a randomly selected familiar member of the alternative class, and the other was a novel stimulus. When required to choose which comparison matched the sample, the subjects reliably rejected the familiar comparison, and instead selected the unfamiliar one. Next, the sea lions were presented with transfer problems that could not be solved by exclusion; they immediately grouped the new stimuli into the appropriate classes. These findings show that exclusion procedures can rapidly generate new stimulus relations that can be used to expand stimulus classes.Key words: exclusion, fast mapping, equivalence, symmetry, differential outcomes, class-specific reinforcement, California sea lionsIn the context of human language learning (semantics), appropriate responding can be facilitated by presenting new problems in the context of familiar alternatives. For example, if a child is asked ''Which one is the pafe?'' he or she may examine an array of familiar, already named objects and then select the novel item. This phenomenon, called fast mapping, linguistic inference, or the disambiguation effect in the field of psycholinguistics, is central to the development of language. In behavior analysis and animal cognition, this type of errorless performance is known as exResearch was supported by ONR Grant N00014-99-1064 to R. J. Schusterman. A DoD AASERT Fellowship and a GAANN Fellowship provided funding for C. R. Kastak. A portion of this manuscript was presented as an invited talk to the American Psychological Association in San Francisco, August 2001. We thank Tom Zentall for constructive comments during the preparation of this article. We greatly appreciate the encouragement given to us by David Kastak throughout the experiment, and we are particularly thankful to him for his insights during the preparation of the final manuscript. We also thank the dedicated research team at the Pinniped Cognition and Sensory Systems Laboratory, especially Kirsten Jensen and Shannon Spillman.Correspondence and reprint requests may be addressed to either author at Long Marine Laboratory, University of California at Santa Cruz, 100 Shaffer Road, Santa Cruz, California 95060 (e-mail: coll@cats.ucsc.edu or rjschust@cats.ucsc.edu).clusion or emergent matching (Wilkinson, Dube, & McIlvane, 1998). Dixon (1977) coined the term e...

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Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Kastak

Schusterman

2002

J Exper Analysis Behavior

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“…But if these pigeons ignored sample location, only two rules were needed to support accurate performance (e.g., "choose vertical after red" and "choose horizontal after green") in comparison with four for the location-relevant group ("choose vertical after left-red," "choose horizontal after left-green," "choose horizontal after right-red," and "choose vertical after right-green"). So why didn't fewer rules produce faster learning as in other conditional discriminations (Berryman, Cumming, Cohen, & Johnson, 1965)? One answer is that acquisition rate depended on when sample location came to be ignored in training.…”

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confidence: 99%

Sample and comparison location as factors in matching acquisition, transfer, and acquired equivalence

Urcuioli

2007

Learning & Behavior

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Pigeons learned symbolic matching with samples appearing equally often on left and right keys. For a location-relevant group, the reinforced comparison choice for each sample reversed across sample locations; for a location-irrelevant group, the reinforced choices were the same. Consistent with the hypothesis that samples at different locations are functionally different for pigeons, Experiment 1 showed that matching acquisition was comparable in these two groups. Nevertheless, the location-irrelevant group eventually ignored sample location, given that their performances subsequently transferred to a novel (center-key) sample location. This transfer was not simply due to sample familiarity at different training locations; rather, it required that left-and right-key samples occasion the same reinforced choices in training. Acquired equivalence between those samples was then assessed in Experiment 2. The location-irrelevant group showed the predicted equivalence effects, but the location-relevant group did not-in fact, its results were the opposite of those predicted by equivalence. Their results indicate that the functional comparison stimuli are also defined in terms of their locations.

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“…In oddity, each ST designates one CO-and two (or more) cOt stimuli. Evidence from transfer tests following extensive original training provides evidence that, for both simple matching and simple oddity, the pigeon selects the COt but does not avoid the CO-when in the presence of a particular ST Berryman, Cumming, Cohen, & Johnson, 1965). Thatis, the pigeon is controlled by the S+ rules (ST implies CO+) but not by the S-rules (ST implies CO-) in both the matching and the oddity cases.…”

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Effects of sodium pentobarbital on symbolic matching and symbolic oddity performance

Eckerman

Lanson

Berryman

1978

Bull. Psychon. Soc.

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Pigeons' conditional discrimination accuracy was equally disrupted by administering sodium pentobarbital when the discrimination required a three-alternative symbolic matching-to-sample task (if blue, select green; if green, select red; if red, select blue) as when it required a thr~ alternative symbolic oddity-from-sample task (if blue, select anything but green; etc.). This equivalence in disruption makes difficult interpretation of prior findings sho~ing simple matching to sample (if blue, select blue; if green, select green; etc.) to be more dIsrupted by drugs than was simple oddity (if blue, select anything but blue; etc.).Two previous studies (Berryman, Cumming, Nevin, & Jarvik, 1964; Berryman, Jarvik, & Nevin, 1962) have shown differences in drug effects on the performance of pigeons on simple matching-to-sample and simple oddity-from-sample tasks. Specifically, 10 mg/kg of sodium pentobarbital reduced the matching accuracy from a baseline of 94% correct to 76%, while the same dose only reduced oddity accuracy from 95% to 89%.In both experiments, a sample, or standard (ST) color, was presented to start a trial. This sample indicated which one of a pair of comparison colors (COs) was correct for that trial. After the subject had responded to the ST, the COs appeared; a response to one of them (the CO+) was reinforced with food and a response to the other (the CO-) was punished by a brief blackout. In simple matching to sample, food reinforcement was given for selecting the CO with the same physical characteristics as the ST; in simple oddity, for selecting any CO but the one with the same physical characteristics as the ST. However, as Cumming and Berryman (I965) indicate in their extensive review of

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Acquisition and Transfer of Simultaneous Oddity

Cited by 65 publications

References 5 publications

Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Sea Lions and Equivalence: Expanding Classes by Exclusion

Sample and comparison location as factors in matching acquisition, transfer, and acquired equivalence

Effects of sodium pentobarbital on symbolic matching and symbolic oddity performance

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