The influence of training procedure and stimulus valence on the long-term maintenance of equivalence relations

•The participants demonstrated the emergent stimulus-control following either DMTS and SMTS training.•The performances of SMTS group on equivalence testing have declined 30 days later.•The follow-up assessments showed the stability of equivalence-like performances among participants in the DMTS grou...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Behavioural processes 2021-04, Vol.185, p.104343-104343, Article 104343
Main Authors: Silveira, Marcelo V., Camargo, Julio C., Aggio, Natália M., Ribeiro, Giovan W., Cortez, Mariéle Diniz, Young, Michael E., de Rose, Julio C.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Concept Formation
Discrimination Learning
DMTS
Equivalence relations
Humans
Photic Stimulation
Probability
Semantic differential
SMTS
Transfer of functions
Verbal Behavior
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Summary:•The participants demonstrated the emergent stimulus-control following either DMTS and SMTS training.•The performances of SMTS group on equivalence testing have declined 30 days later.•The follow-up assessments showed the stability of equivalence-like performances among participants in the DMTS group.•Overall the probability of class-consistent choices and derived transfer of function was enhanced for the classes composed of pictures of happy faces.•Positive valence and DMTS procedure combined foster the long-term maintenance of equivalence classes. In the current research, we aimed at extending Silveira et al. (2016) results by verifying whether the long-term maintenance of the equivalence classes is influenced by stimulus valence and MTS training procedures. The delayed and simultaneous MTS were used to train two groups of participants in series of conditional relation trials involving pictures of humans’ faces expressing familiar emotions (A) and abstract forms (B, C, and D). The participants that demonstrated the emergence of novel BD and DB relations and class-consistent derived transfer of functions returned to the laboratory thirty days later. Follow-up assessments were given in which the probability of class-consistent responses was higher for the happy class only for participants exposed to DMTS training. This result shows that the maintenance of equivalence classes cannot be accounted for only in terms of the affective valence of the familiar stimulus. The affective valence of the happy faces may have yoked with the properties of DMTS, favoring the maintenance of the happy class. Thereby, we discussed the role of mediating verbal behavior evoked selectively by the pictures of happy faces appearing as samples that may have persisted during the delay interval as a possible mechanism underlying performances of participants trained in DMTS procedure.
ISSN:0376-6357
1872-8308
DOI:10.1016/j.beproc.2021.104343