Reaction time (RT), thought to be important for acquiring a full understanding of the establishment of equivalence classes, has been reported in a number of studies within the area of stimulus equivalence research. In this study, we trained 3 classes of potentially 3 members, with arbitrary stimuli in a one-to-many training structure in 5 adult…

Studies comparing the effectiveness of the stimulus-pairing-observation and matching-to-sample procedures in facilitating equivalence relations have reported conflicting findings. This study compared the effectiveness of these procedures and examined the effect of stimulus arrangement and the number of training trials completed prior to each…

The current study investigated the relative effects of Before and After relational cues on temporal order judgments. In Experiment 1, participants (N = 20) were exposed to a 5-phase temporal relational responding task. Participants observed a sequence of 2 familiar shapes and then completed either a Before or an After statement to describe the…

The present experiment investigated the relationship between laboratory measures of self-control and delay of gratification in children and explored several other factors that may influence self-control. In the self-control paradigm, 30 four-year-old children repeatedly chose between three reinforcers received after a delay and one reinforcer…

The effects of response topography on stimulus class formation were studied in two experiments. In Experiment 1, 32 college students were assigned to 2 response topographies and 2 stimulus sets, in a 2 x 2 design. Students selected stimuli by either moving a mouse to lace an arrow-shaped cursor on the stimulus or pressing a key corresponding to…

Recently, Redford (2010) found that monkeys seemed to exert metacognitive control in a category-learning paradigm. Specifically, they selected more trials to view as the difficulty of the category-learning task increased. However, category-learning difficulty was determined by manipulating the family resemblance across the to-be-learned exemplars.…

Self-control can be defined as the choice of a larger, more delayed reinforcer over a smaller, less delayed reinforcer, and impulsiveness as the opposite. Previous research suggests that exposure to visual food cues affects adult humans' self-control. Previous research also suggests that food deprivation decreases adult humans' self-control. The…

Two experiments were designed to replicate and extend previous findings on the transformation of avoidance response functions in accordance with the relational frames of Same and Opposite. Participants were first exposed to non-arbitrary and arbitrary relational training and testing. Next, during avoidance conditioning, one stimulus from the…

Previous research has suggested that persons with mental retardation evidence equivalence more readily after being trained on auditory-visual than on visual-visual match-to-sample tasks. The present study sought to determine if this discrepancy is also apparent in normally capable preschoolers and whether the derived class-consistent test…

We evaluated formation of simple symbolic categories from initial learning of specific dictated word-picture relations through emergence of untaught or derived relations. Participants were 10 individuals with severe intellectual and language limitations. Three experimental categories were constructed, each containing 1 spoken word (Set A), 1…

The capacity to exhibit generalized sameness-difference judgments is a hallmark of cognition that is regularly exhibited by humans. As yet, that capacity has not been well documented in New World monkeys such as the capuchin (Cebus apella). This article presents data obtained with 6 capuchin monkeys with a variety of procedures that might lead to…

Derived conditional discrimination was evaluated in 2 men with mental retardation whose language was limited to gestural requests. In each conditional-discrimination task, sample stimuli were arbitrary visual forms and comparison stimuli were black squares presented in 2 of the 4 corners of a computer screen. Subjects learned to select 1 position…

Vidic and Haaf (2004) questioned the idea that infants use head information to categorize cats as distinct from dogs (Quinn & Eimas, 1996) and argued instead that the torso region is important. However, only null results were observed in the critical test comparisons between modified and unmodified stimuli. In addition, a priori preferences for…

The present paper describes 2 studies that present a conceptual interpretation and experimental findings involving the developing and dismantling of equivalence classes consisting of terrorist stimuli. In the first study, 8 United States citizen participants were trained to match nonterrorist stimuli to American and terrorist images. Afterwards,…