Children and adults were trained and tested on formation of novel simple discriminations and conditional stimulus relations. Subjects who formed these sets were trained and tested on formation of stimulus equivalence classes. A modest majority of children matched directly paired stimuli; a few matched indirectly paired stimuli. All normal adults…

Ten author-contributed papers present information on stimulus control research and developmental disabilities. Articles address such isues as the role of naming, development of stimulus classes, control by exclusion, and comparison of trial-and-error and graduated stimulus change procedures. (CL)

Four male and five female Negro children (ranging in age from 5 to 9 years) served in an experimental comparison of the discriminative control exerted by sex and race aspects of other children. A baseline was established in which color photoslides of a Negro girl and a Caucasian boy differentially controlled responding on two push buttons.…

This paper develops a stimulus selection theory, based on an extensive review of previous research, which gives weight to context change or stimulus generalization decrement. The theory assumes no special compounding or configurational process, and accounts for the learning of successive discriminations without the addition of any special process.…

In this study, the effects of rewards on same-different judgments of size, color, and weight were investigated. Subjects were 45 children at the kindergarten and first-grade level. The children were assigned to one of three conditions: (1) rewarded for reporting black in the identification of the colors of balls contained inside gray jars, (2)…

Six studies relevant to the analysis of generalized imitative behavior are described. The first examined the role of verbal instructions in generalized imitation by comparing the use of a "do this" instruction with no such instruction and the use of positive reinforcement with no reinforcement. The tenacity of generalized imitation in this study…

Trained preschoolers and adults on three sets of successive discriminations with stimuli labeled A, B, and R. Tested for derived stimulus-response relations and stimulus-stimulus relations. Adults displayed class-consistent B-R and A-B performances over all conditions. Children's display of class-consistent B-R performance varied by training…

One hundred twenty-eight preschool boys were subjects in a 4x2x2 factorial design to investigate the change in reinforcer efficacy as a function of prior stimulus exposure. The factors were: (1) amount of repetition, 5, 25, 45, or 65; (2) reinforcer, good or bell; and (3) satiator, good or bell. Two additional groups were run as control groups to…