Towards a behavioral analysis of humor: Derived transfer of self-reported humor ratings.

Abstract

Recently, behavior analysts have shown considerable interest in the burgeoning research area of derived stimulus relations which, many argue, may provide the foundations for a behavioral account of novel, complex behavior. Typically studied using a matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure, the basic finding is as follows. Suppose, for instance, reinforcement is delivered for selection of comparison B in the presence of the sample A, and for selection of comparison C in the presence of sample B, respectively. Most verbally able humans will now readily reverse these explicitly reinforced conditional discriminations in the absence of further training. That is, they will now select A given B, and B given C in accordance with derived symmetrical, or mutually entailed, stimulus relations. Furthermore, participants will now also select C given A and A given C in accordance with derived transitive and equivalence, or combinatorially entailed, stimulus relations without further training. Following such derived performances, the stimuli are said to participate in an equivalence class (Sidman, 1994) or a relational frame of equivalence (Barnes, 1994; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001). Perhaps what is most interesting about derived stimulus relations such as equivalence is that the test outcomes are not readily predicted from the traditional concept of conditional discrimination; neither A nor C has a direct history of differential reinforcement with regard to the other, and therefore neither stimulus should control selection of the other. Another feature of derived stimulus relations is the transfer of stimulus functions, which has also generated research interest due in part to its implications for understanding a wide range of complex, derived behavior. The transfer of stimulus functions occurs when the function of one stimulus in a derived relation alters the functions of another according to the derived relation between the two, without additional training (see Dymond & Rehfeldt, 2000). To date, the transfer of functions through equivalence relations has been demonstrated with discriminative (e.g., Barnes & Keenan, 1993; Grey & Barnes, 1996; Roche, Barnes-Holmes, Smeets, Barnes-Holmes, & McGeady, 2000; Wulfert & Hayes, 1988), self-discriminative (Dymond & Barnes, 1994, 1997, 1998), consequential (Hayes, Kohlenberg, & Hayes, 1991; Greenway, Dougher, & Wulfert, 1996), and respondent (Dougher Augustson, Markham, Greenway, & Wulfert, 1994; Roche & Barnes, 1997; Roche et al., 2000) stimulus functions in adults and children. For instance, Barnes and Keenan (1993) first trained participants on a series of related conditional discriminations in a MTS format (i.e., A1-B1, A1-C1, A2-B2, A2C2), and then explicitly trained high-rate and low-rate performances on a schedule task in the presence of the two B stimuli (i.e., B1 = low-rate, B2 = high-rate). Subsequently, the researchers demonstrated a transfer of discriminative control over the two types of schedule performance through derived equivalence relations (i.e., C1 = low rate, and C2 = high rate), without any further training. The transfer of stimulus functions may have implications for a contemporary understanding of complex behavior, and the research topics investigated usually reflect this. Several studies have either employed procedures germane to a behavioral analysis of, for instance, self-awareness (e.g., Dymond & Barnes, 1997), sexual arousal (Roche & Barnes, 1997), rule-following (Barnes-Holmes, Healy, & Hayes, 2000), and attitude formation (Grey & Barnes, 1996) or have highlighted similarities between the transfer of functions and complex behavior beyond the laboratory (e.g., Friman, Hayes, & Wilson, 1998; Roche et al., 2000; Wilson & Hayes, 2000). An important issue in much of this research is the development of new procedures to measure the transfer of functions in ways that formally resemble the behavior of interest. …