Comments on Sidman’s Remarks

Abstract

I am deeply honored by the invitation to comment on Murray Sidman's Remarks (Sidman, 1976, 1977a, 1977b, 1978, 1979, 1981, 2011). At the same time, I have to agree with Sidman's own comments in one of those remarks: It is difficult to add anything cogent that has not already been (Sidman, 1976, p. 279). In the present commentary I will mention two of the issues I have found important in my experience in behavior analysis: stimulus control and experimental design. Sidman mentions matching-to-sample and conditional discrimination in several of his remarks (Sidman, 1978, 1979, 1981, 2011), as well as symmetry (Sidman, 1981). Hence, I find it appropriate to comment on issues regarding stimulus equivalence. My interest in stimulus equivalence research was first kindled in 1982. I was made aware of the JEAB articles published by Murray Sidman and coworkers when I was a graduate student. The content of the articles really fascinated me, and it was like opening a door to a new world. We had a number of seminars at the university about the generativity of language. I remember that one of the professors argued that for a behavior analytic explanation of language to be valid, people would have to live for over 1000 years because of the need to reinforce every one of their verbal utterances. We know that the professor's comments indicate an incomplete understanding of a behavior analytic explanation of language, but those comments nevertheless highlight an important point: How do people come to say or do things they have never said or done before? So for me the most fascinating aspect of stimulus equivalence was the emergence of relations that have not been directly trained. Sidman's studies have not only had a great impact on basic research, but also on applied research and practical demonstrations of how to use stimulus equivalence training to teach skills. Interestingly, Sidman's studies in the 1970s were concerned with teaching reading skills (or, more precisely, reading with comprehension) to persons with developmental disabilities. After 1982, research in stimulus equivalence was largely concerned with basic research questions such as, for example, identifying the variables and relations that were responsible for the development of stimulus equivalence. However, lately a large number of studies have shown the importance of stimulus equivalence training in establishing many different skills with many different types of participants. The most fascinating