The Respondent-Type Matching-to-Sample Procedure: A Comparison of One-to-Many and Linear Procedure for Establishing Equivalence Responding

Abstract

Stimulus equivalence research is dominated by operant conditioning procedures that require the active responding of a participant to establish relations between arbitrary stimuli. In comparison, there has been relatively little research using respondent-type procedures, which only require the participant to view relations that appear on screen. This presentation describes two experiments using a respondent-type matching-to-sample procedure to examine the effect of the one-to-many (OTM) training procedure and the linear procedure on equivalence class formation. The OTM procedure was extremely effective in generating equivalence responding, however the linear procedure was not. These findings are discussed in the context of previous research comparing the two training procedures, as well as the effectiveness of previous respondent procedures.