Stimulus Equivalence and Transitive Associations: A Methodological Analysis

Abstract

When a number of two-stimulus relations are established through training within a set of stimuli, other two-stimulus relations often emerge in the same set without direct training. These, termed "transitive stimulus relations," have been demonstrated with a variety of visual and auditory stimuli. The phenomenon has served as a behavioral model for explaining the emergence of rudimentary comprehension and reading skills, and the development of generative syntactic repertoires. This article considers the range of relations that can arise between a given number of stimuli in a class, the number of directly established two-stimulus relations necessary for the emergence of transitive relations, the forms that training sets of stimuli can take, and the number of transitive two-stimulus relations that can be induced without direct training. The procedures needed to establish and assess transitive stimulus control, the possible interactions between the training and testing procedures, and the constraints these interactions place upon the analysis of transitive stimulus control are also examined. The present analysis indicates that in a transitivity test, choice among such stimuli may be controlled by (1) the relation between the sample and the positive comparison stimulus (transitive stimulus control), (2) the relation between the sample and the negative comparison stimulus (S-rule control), and (3) possible discriminative properties that may inadvertently be established in the positive and negative comparison stimuli (valence control). Methods are described for distinguishing these three forms of stimulus control.

Consequências Específicas Arbitrárias Em Matching De Identidade São Efetivas Para O Estabelecimento De Classes De Equivalência?

“…A emergência dos desempenhos em MTS arbitrário só foi possível porque rf1 estava mutuamente implicado no fortalecimento do responder diante dos estímulos A1 e B1, enquanto o responder aos estímulos A2 e B2 era fortalecido por rf2. Dito de outra forma: rf1 era nódulo para A1 e B1, e A2 e B2 tinham rf2 como nódulo (cf., Fields, Verhave, & Fath, 1984).…”

Topography of Responses in Conditional Discrimination Influences Formation of Equivalence Classes

“…Dn, respectively, to each class. Fields, Verhave, and Fath (1984) showed that to form n-members equivalence classes, it is necessary to teach at least n -1 conditional discriminations. Different training designs may accomplish this, and the number of possible training designs increases with the number of prospective class members.…”

Differential Probability of Equivalence Class Formation Following a One-To-Many Versus a Many-To-One Training Structure

“…All three types of training structures have been commonly used in the literature to produce two or more equivalence classes 1 (Saunders & Green, 1999). All of these procedures have been regarded as equally likely to produce emergent relations indicative of equivalence classes (e.g., Fields, Verhave, & Fath, 1984;Sidman & Tailby, 1982). The past few years have brought several studies that document differential probability of equivalence class formation following different training structures, both with mentally retarded subjects (Saunders et aI., 1993;Saunders, Wachter, & Spradlin, 1988;Spradlin & Saunders, 1986) and intellectually normal subjects (Arntzen & Holth, 1997;Barnes, 1992, as cited in Barnes, 1994).…”