Extending Equivalence Classes to Sentences and to Instructional Control

Abstract

Sidman proposed that the formation of equivalence relations helps to make rule-governed behavior possible. This paper provides some experimental evidence that meaningless auditory and/or pictorial stimuli began to function as instructional stimuli, after their participation in equivalence classes with actions, and actions directed to objects. Without the formation of equivalence classes the participants could not have followed the instructions; however, belonging to a class contributes to, but does not entirely determine that an instruction will be followed. The contribution of these studies is limited to two types of relationships (word x object; word x action) and to the conditions under which they were carried out. Whether the same findings would extend to relations between words and other aspects of the environment, such as qualities, temporal and spatial relations, among others, is a question for future research. Moreover, the experiments employed well-defined categories (names and verbs), but many of these types of words have no “referents”; and sentences are composed of some elements that also have no referents, except their relationship to other elements within the sentence (e.g., the autoclitics). The comprehension of instructions by a listener is a topic that requires further thought and investigation.