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ON THE ORIGINS OF EMERGENT DIFFERENTIAL SAMPLE BEHAVIOR
Author(s) -
Urcuioli Peter J.,
Vasconcelos Marco
Publication year - 2008
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.2008.90-61
Subject(s) - sample (material) , equivalence (formal languages) , differential (mechanical device) , reinforcement , matching (statistics) , psychology , computer science , artificial intelligence , statistics , social psychology , mathematics , chemistry , discrete mathematics , chromatography , engineering , aerospace engineering
Two experiments evaluated the source(s) of emergent differential sample behavior in pigeons. Initially, pigeons learned two‐sample, two‐alternative symbolic matching in which different patterns of sample responding were required to produce the comparisons. Afterwards, two other samples nominally identical to the comparisons were added to the matching task. on new‐sample trials, completion of either sample‐response requirement produced comparison alternatives which were either the same as or different from the alternatives on the familiar‐sample trials. Differential responding to the new samples developed only when the comparisons were the same as the familiar samples. The results are consistent with acquired sample equivalence and adventitious reinforcement accounts of emergent sample behavior and are inconsistent with bidirectional transfer (symmetry) between the response patterns explicitly required to the originally trained (familiar) samples and the subsequently reinforced comparisons.