Naming in conditional discrimination and stimulus equivalence

Abstract

Using a matching-to-sample procedure, McIntire, Cleary, and Thompson (1987) taught monkeys the conditional relations A1-R1-A1-R1, A2-R2-A2-R2, A1-R1-B1-R1, A2-R2-B2-R2, B1-R1-C1-R1, and B2-R2-C2-R2, where the first and third terms in each relation refer to the sample and comparison stimuli, respectively, and the second and last terms refer to the emission of a distinctive pattern of responding. The subjects were then tested for the emergent relations A-C, C-A, B-A, C-B, and B-B, with the differential response produced by a given stimulus during training also emitted on test trials (e.g., A1-R1-C1-R1). The performances of both subjects were as accurate on the tested relations as they had been on the trained relations. The new relations were characterized as demonstrations of stimulus equivalence. However, the conditional discrimination literature shows that such training procedures generate control of comparison selection by the differential response patterns. Therefore, no emergent relations were demonstrated because all of the trained response-stimulus relations were preserved on test trials. This paper suggests that these procedures do not provide an appropriate analogy for the kind of emergent stimulus-stimulus relations exhibited by human subjects in equivalence studies and outlines a paradigm for assessing the relative influence of stimulus-stimulus and response-stimulus relations.