Premium
Discriminative functions and over‐training as class‐enhancing determinants of meaningful stimuli
Author(s) -
Travis Robert W.,
Fields Lanny,
Arntzen Erik
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
journal of the experimental analysis of behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.75
H-Index - 61
eISSN - 1938-3711
pISSN - 0022-5002
DOI - 10.1002/jeab.91
Subject(s) - overtraining , psychology , nonsense , discriminative model , audiology , discrimination learning , equivalence class (music) , developmental psychology , mathematics , artificial intelligence , medicine , computer science , physical therapy , biochemistry , chemistry , discrete mathematics , athletes , gene
Likelihood of equivalence class formation (yield) was influenced by pre‐class formation of simultaneous and successive discriminations, their mastery criteria, and overtraining of the successive discriminations. Each undergraduate in seven groups attempted to form two 3‐node, 5‐member equivalence classes (ABCDE). In the pictorial (PIC) group, meaningless nonsense syllables were used as the A, B, D, and E stimuli and meaningful pictures as the C stimuli. Nonsense syllables only were used in the other groups. The abstract (ABS) or 0‐0‐0 group involved no pre‐class training. In the 84‐0‐0, 84‐5‐0 and 84‐20‐0 groups, simultaneous discriminations were trained among C stimuli to a mastery criterion of 84 trials, followed by successive discriminations trained to mastery criteria of 0, 5, and 20 trials, respectively. In the 84‐20‐0, 84‐20‐100, and 84‐20‐500 groups, simultaneous and successive discriminations were trained as noted, followed by overtraining with 0, 100, 500 successive‐discrimination trials, respectively. The ABS group produced a 6% yield with the 84‐0‐0, 84‐5‐0, and 84‐20‐0 groups producing further modest increments. Overtraining produced a linear increase in yield, reaching 85% after 500 overtraining trials, a yield matching that produced by classes containing pictures as C stimuli (PIC). Thus, acquired discriminative functions and the overtraining of at least one function can account for class enhancement by meaningful stimuli.