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CONDITIONAL RELATIONS WITH COMPOUND ABSTRACT STIMULI USING A GO/NO‐GO PROCEDURE
Author(s) -
Debert Paula,
Matos Maria Amelia,
McIlvane William
Publication year - 2007
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.2007.46-05
Subject(s) - stimulus (psychology) , psychology , transitive relation , equivalence relation , cognitive psychology , go/no go , social psychology , communication , mathematics , computer science , pure mathematics , combinatorics , machine learning
The aim of this study was to evaluate whether emergent conditional relations could be established with a go/no‐go procedure using compound abstract stimuli. The procedure was conducted with 6 adult humans. During training, responses emitted in the presence of certain stimulus compounds (A1B1, A2B2, A3B3, B1C1, B2C2, and B3C3) were followed by reinforcing consequences (points); responses emitted in the presence of other compounds (A1B2, A1B3, A2B1, A2B3, A3B1, A3B2, B1C2, B1C3, B2C1, B2C3, B3C1 and B3C2) were not (i.e., extinction). During subsequent tests of emergent relations, new configurations (BA, CB, AC, and CA relations) were presented, formed by the recombination of training stimuli and structurally resembling tests usually employed in stimulus equivalence studies. Results showed that all 6 participants displayed immediate emergence of relations consistent with symmetry. Four participants exhibited emergent relations consistent with both transitivity and equivalence. These results indicate that a go/no‐go procedure with compound stimuli can establish emergent conditional relations, thus providing a procedural alternative to the matching‐to‐sample procedures commonly used in studies of stimulus equivalence.