Association for Behavior Analysis International

The purpose of this symposium is to present relevant research regarding emergent stimulus relations and the mediating processes that may influence their emergence. Data will be presented by Joao Lucas that suggest equivalence classes formed through intraverbal bidirectional naming might depend on additional sources of verbal control. Next, Robbie Hanson will present data on the possible influence of echoic and/or tact mediation on equivalence-class performances. His results seem to support verbal mediation via tact and intraverbal behavior. Next, Eliana Buss will present data on the visual mediation hypothesis that suggests that directing participants to use visualization may cause untaught relations to emerge more easily. Lastly, Reagan Cox will also present data on the visual mediation hypothesis that suggests that when verbal mediation is blocked, speed of responding on a test for emergent relations is unaffected. All of these studies presented together will provide the audience with a broad spectrum of data on emergent stimulus relations and the factors that affect their emergence.

The target audience for this symposium is researchers in the area of behavior analysis and specifically verbal behavior. The audience should already have a basic understanding of verbal behavior.

Bidirectional naming (BiN) is a model that explicitly relates verbal operants with equivalence class formation. For instance, Ma, Miguel and Jennings (2016) successfully established equivalence classes through intraverbal BiN. There, authors trained intraverbal using a fill-the-blank vocal task with multiple sources of control. The verbal stimulus provided during intraverbal training contained a sample name, alongside a relation autoclitic, and a contextual stimulus. Therefore, the intraverbal BiN may not be a sufficient condition for establishing equivalence. In order to test if the contextual stimulus was critical for their results, we’ve conduced a replication. In a pilot version, participants were eight college students exposed to a reversal design, but during intraverbal training, we’ve excluded the contextual stimulus. Our results show that, even though all participants mastered intraverbal relations, only two out of eight passed equivalence post-tests with a 90% criterium. Importantly, all participants failed the intraverbal emergence post-test. This difference between intraverbal and non-verbal emergence during post-tests is an indirect fallout of the absence of contextual stimuli, since during intraverbal post-tests, participants had no environmental clue about which relations were being tested. Our results suggest equivalence classes formed through intraverbal BiN might depend on additional sources of verbal control.

Previous studies have shown that the successive MTS (S-MTS) procedure, in which one stimulus is presented at time with a “go” (touch) and “no-go” (refrain from touch) response requirement, is an effective approach for establishing visual-visual, visual-auditory, and auditory-auditory conditional relations with college students. Results of these studies suggest the possible influence of echoic and/or tact mediation on equivalence-class performances. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to extend previous findings to non-verbal auditory stimuli. Eight college students learned to conditionally relate nonverbal auditory stimuli into three 3-member classes. Following training, all participants met emergence criterion for symmetry and six out of eight participants met emergence criterion for transitivity/equivalence. Further, all participants responded with either an experimenter-defined tact or a unique tact, and five participants related these names intraverbally. Although these results replicate previous findings with stimuli that cannot be echoed, they seem to support verbal mediation via tact and intraverbal behavior.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of directed visualization during a test of emergent relations between visual stimuli. Participants were college students at Texas Christian University. 25 participants were assigned to each of four groups. The TI group received match-to-sample (MTS) training to relate picture stimuli to nonsense text labels prior to training to relate pairs of labels. The IT group received the same training in the opposite sequence, the TI-DV group received the TI training sequence with the addition of instructions to visualize the picture stimuli during intraverbal training, and the TI-M group received the TI training sequence with the additional instructions to use mnemonics to assist with learning the word pairs during intraverbal training. The post-test assessed emergent relations between the abstract stimuli. We predicted that the TI-DV group would perform with greater speed and accuracy than all other groups. Preliminary data suggest participants in the TI and TI-DV groups are responding with faster speed on the post-test. However, participants in the TI-DV and TI-M groups are performing with higher accuracy on the post-test test than the other groups. Additional data collection is ongoing.

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of blocking verbal mediation during a test of emergent relations between visual stimuli. Participants were adults over the age of 18 recruited from Texas Christian University and personal contacts. 25 participants were assigned to each of four groups. The TI group received match-to-sample (MTS) training to relate abstract visual stimuli to nonsense text labels prior to training to relate pairs of labels. The IT group received the same training in the opposite sequence, the TIV group received the TI training sequence with the addition of instructions to complete a vocal task during the test for emergent relations, and the ITV group received the IT training sequence with those same instructions. A post-test assessed emergent relations between the abstract stimuli. We predicted the TIV group would perform with great speed and accuracy than the ITV group due to visual mediation being available as an alternative mechanism. Preliminary data suggest participants in the TI and TIV groups are responding with faster speed on the post-test. However, participants in the TI and IT groups are performing with higher accuracy on the post-test test than the other groups. Additional data collection is ongoing.