Establishing conditional discriminations without direct training: stimulus classes and labels

Abstract

An attempt was made to expand the paradigm published by Spradlin, Cotter, and Baxley (1973). Spradlin et al. conditioned subjects to select a choice stimulus in response to two different sample stimuli and then conditioned them to select a new choice stimulus in response to one sample stimulus. The remaining sample stimulus then controlled the second choice stimulus. In the current investigation, two subjects were taught two classes of four symbols each through visual match-to-sample training. When auditory symbols were conditioned to control some members of these two classes, the reamining members came under auditory control without direct training.