Reversing Time and Size: Mutual Entailment of Nonarbitrary Temporal and Magnitude Relational Responding

Abstract

Responding to temporal relational statements that include the original events (e.g., A. .. B) in a reversed order (e.g., “B after A”) is less accurate and more time-consuming than responding to such statements when they retain the original order of presentation (e.g., “A before B”). The current study assessed whether this effect was limited to temporal relational responding by estimating the effect of reversal on magnitude statements (e.g., “B bigger than A”) as well as temporal statements. Participants (N = 40) completed temporal and magnitude relational judgement tasks in blocks consisting of a training phase and a testing phase. The order of relational tasks was counterbalanced across participants; participants learned the second type of relational task faster than the first. During testing, reversal of the order of stimuli in both temporal and magnitude relations reduced accuracy and increased response latencies suggesting that the reversal effect was not limited to temporal relations. The findings support the position that a general relational effect, such as mutual entailment, may underlie the increased difficulty of reversed temporal relational statements.