Effect of Rapid Responding on Establishment of Conditional Discriminations and Formation of Equivalence Classes

Abstract

Five adults served as participants in the present experiment, which aimed to study the establishment of conditional discriminations and the formation of equivalence classes with a restricted time window for responding. Prior to the conditional discrimination training the participants were trained in fast responding. This preliminary training was arranged with identity matching of colors in which a limited hold (LH) to sample and comparison was titrated to an asymptotic value of fast responding. The limited hold to the sample ranged from asymptotic values of 400 ms to 700 ms and to the comparison ranged the asymptotic values from 800 ms to 1100 ms. In the conditional-discrimination training, the value of the LH was tailored to each participant’s asymptotic value in the preliminary training plus 200 ms. None of the five participants established the conditional discriminations. Therefore, in the next phase, the LH was titrated upward until the participants established the conditional discriminations. The main findings were that four of the five participants responded in accordance with stimulus equivalence.