scholarly journals Conditional Discriminations by Preverbal Children in an Identity Matching-to-Sample Task

2011 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-339 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Stella C. de Alcantara Gil ◽  
Thais Porlan de Oliveira ◽  
William J. McIlvane
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Beurms ◽  
Ana Gloria Plaza Jurado ◽  
Ana Sánchez-Kuhn ◽  
Jan De Houwer ◽  
Tom Beckers

Reflexivity entails that an organism can match a stimulus to itself (“A=A”) without direct training. Reflexivity is typically studied in identity matching-to-sample tasks wherein subjects are first presented with a sample stimulus in the middle position and trained to select the same stimulus from two comparison stimuli that are subsequently presented in the side positions. However, when the position of the comparisons is altered, nonhuman animals often revert to responding at chance levels, suggesting that they encode the location of stimuli together with their identity as part of the functional stimulus. This might hamper generalization of the task to novel stimuli (i.e., generalized identity matching-to-sample), which would be an observation of reflexivity. To test whether the use of multiple locations facilitates generalized identity matching-to-sample in rats, we used an olfactory matching-to-sample task. Two rats received training in which the location of the stimuli varied randomly. The speed with which they learned to match identical odors and the generalization to new stimuli was compared with two rats that received standard matching-to-sample training in which the location of the stimuli was fixed. We observed generalized identity matching-to-sample in two rats that could not be explained by reinforcement recency. However, we found no evidence that the use of multiple locations facilitated generalized identity matching-to-sample.


2016 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 30-39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paulo S. D. Soares Filho ◽  
Álvaro J. M. Silva ◽  
Saulo M Velasco ◽  
Romariz S Barros ◽  
Gerson Yukio Tomanari

The present study presents a procedure to assess the property of symmetry by comparing the acquisition of conditional relations that are consistent and inconsistent with this property in a capuchin monkey (Sapajus spp.). One young male monkey underwent arbitrary matching-to-sample training. The experiment had four phases: Phase 1.1 (establishing A1B1 and A2B2 relations), Phase 1.2 (reinforcing B1A1 and B2A2 relations, consistent with the property of symmetry), Phase 2.1 (establishing A3B3 and A4B4 relations), and Phase 2.2 (reinforcing B3A4 and B4A3 relations, inconsistent with the property of symmetry). A comparison between Phase 1.2 (consistent) and Phase 2.2 (inconsistent) showed faster acquisition of consistent relations (B1A1 and B2A2) than inconsistent relations (B3A4 and B4A3). The results suggest that the established conditional discriminations may have the property of symmetry and confirm the potential of comparative analysis between the acquisition of conditional discriminations as a promising procedure to evaluate equivalence class formation in nonhuman subjects.


2015 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 250
Author(s):  
Vicente Pérez ◽  
Eduardo Polín

<span lang="EN-US">The conditional discrimination is a procedure the use of which is widely extended in the EAB, especially those known as “Matching to Sample”. Although it has been used with a wide variety of species, the behavior of humans with verbal skills in these kinds of tasks may involve other control variables which are different from the scheduled contingencies of four terms. The aim of this work was to verify if conditional discriminations could be acquired, although reinforcement contingencies did not involve the sample. 109 psychology students, who were divided into three conditions, participated in the study. All of them were exposed to two blocks of training (A and B), with one sample and three comparisons, however, the sample did not really function as a conditional stimulus in 75% of the trials in block B. Simultaneity between sample and comparisons, as well as the requirement of a sample observation response, were manipulated resulting in three different conditions. The results showed no differences between acquisition speed in block A and block B in any condition, which suggests that the behavior of the participants was more controlled by the stimuli configuration than by the reinforcement contingencies.</span>


2017 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 326-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Ribeiro Camara ◽  
Mariana Ducatti ◽  
Andréia Schmidt

2014 ◽  
Vol 64 (4) ◽  
pp. 693-702 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Leda F. Brino ◽  
Olavo F. Galvão ◽  
Carlos R. F. Picanço ◽  
Romariz S. Barros ◽  
Carlos B. A. Souza ◽  
...  

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