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CONDITIONAL DISCRIMINATION IN MENTALLY RETARDED ADULTS: THE EFFECT OF TRAINING THE COMPONENT SIMPLE DISCRIMINATIONS
Author(s) -
Saunders Kathryn J.,
Spradlin Joseph E.
Publication year - 1989
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 - 10.1901/jeab.1989.52-1
Subject(s) - reinforcement , schedule , mentally retarded , matching (statistics) , discrimination learning , stimulus (psychology) , stimulus control , psychology , sample (material) , audiology , pattern recognition (psychology) , speech recognition , artificial intelligence , computer science , statistics , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , social psychology , mathematics , neuroscience , medicine , chemistry , chromatography , nicotine , operating system
Two subjects with retardation who exhibited generalized identity matching, but who had extensive histories of failure to acquire arbitrary matching, were exposed to a series of conditions designed to train separately the components of a two‐choice conditional discrimination. First, the successive discrimination between the sample stimuli was established by programming a different schedule of reinforcement in the presence of each sample stimulus. Schedule performance was acquired and maintained by both subjects, but neither acquired arbitrary matching. To train the simultaneous discrimination between the comparison stimuli, 1 subject was then exposed to a series of simple discrimination reversals and subsequently failed to acquire arbitrary matching. Both subjects acquired arbitrary matching under a procedure that maintained both the sample and the comparison discrimination by first presenting entire sessions composed of one sample‐comparison relation and then gradually reducing the number of consecutive trials with the same sample until sample presentation was randomized (schedule performance was maintained). Removal of the schedule requirement had no effect on arbitrary matching accuracy. Both subjects subsequently demonstrated control by relations symmetric to the trained relations.