The Role of Individual Stimulus Names in The Emergence of Equivalence Relations: The Effects of Interpolated Paired-Associates Training of Discordant Associations Between Names

Abstract

After matching-to-sample (MTS) establishment of six A-B and six B-C trained relations between 18 visual stimuli, and prior to MTS testing for the emergence of A-B-C equivalence classes, undergraduate subjects in Experimental Group A-B were orally taught discordant paired associations (PA) between the names they had given to the A stimuli and their names for the B stimuli. Group A-C similarly learned associations between names for A and C stimuli conflicting with potential A-C transitivity relations based on MTS training. A control group learned associations between A names and neutral names. In subsequent MTS tests equivalence relations emerged with very few errors in the control group. In Group A-B PA links between the names of stimuli often displaced MTS-trained relations and symmetrical relations between the visual stimuli. In Group A-C PA links more often displaced MTS-based emergent transitivity and equivalence relations. Emergent relations formed from combinations of PA-based A-B associations and MTS-based B-C relations could displace purely MTS-based transitivity and equivalence relations in Group A-B, but similar hybrid relations did not emerge in Group A-C to displace MTS-based trained relations or their symmetrical inversions.These results provide evidence for an effective facultative role for the names of individual stimuli in equivalence class formation, but not for their obligate involvement.