The establishment of auditory-visual equivalence classes with a go/no-go successive matching-to-sample procedure

Correspondence Between Vocal-Verbal Behavior and Go/No-Go Responses During the Successive Matching-to-Sample Procedure

In the current study, eight college students were exposed to a successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure utilizing non-verbal auditory stimuli consisting of common sounds. During emergent relations tests, participants were asked to talk aloud, and their vocal-verbal statements were transcribed and categorized as class-consistent, class-inconsistent, or irrelevant. All participants met emergence criterion for symmetry and four did so for transitivity/equivalence. Analysis of vocal-verbal statements showed a positive correlation between class-consistent statements emitted by participants and correct selection responses during S-MTS tasks. Such results suggest possible verbal mediation during emergent relations tests.

The Use of the Go/No-Go Successive Matching-to-Sample Procedure with Nonverbal Auditory Stimuli to Establish Equivalence Classes and Speaker Behavior

The purpose of the current study was to extend the findings on the use of the go/no-go successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure to establish auditory equivalence classes. Eight college students learned to conditionally relate nonverbal auditory stimuli into three, 3-member classes. Following training, all participants met the emergence criterion for symmetry, and six out of eight participants met the emergence criterion for transitivity/equivalence. Furthermore, all participants responded with either an experimenter-defined or a unique tact, and five participants related these names intraverbally. Although these results replicate previous findings, albeit with stimuli that cannot be echoed, possible verbal mediation via tact and intraverbal behavior seems to have occurred.

The establishment of auditory equivalence classes with a go/no-go successive matching-to-sample procedure

The go/no-go successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure involves the presentation of a sample followed by one comparison in the same location. Participants are required to either touch (go) or refrain from touching (no-go) related and unrelated comparisons, respectively. One advantage of S-MTS is that both sample and comparisons can be auditory. Thus, the purpose of Experiment 1 was to establish three 3-member auditory equivalence classes using familiar dictated words. After training AB and AC relations, 16 out of 16 participants met emergence criterion for symmetry (BA/CA), 12 out of 16 for transitivity/equivalence (BC/CB), and 9 out of 16 for intraverbals, for which testing involved vocalizing relations among auditory stimuli. The purpose of Experiment 2 was to assess the potential influence of stimulus topography on equivalence class formation and the emergence of intraverbal behavior. After training AB and AC relations with unfamiliar stimuli, 16 out of 16 participants met emergence criterion for symmetry (BA/CA), 13 out of 16 for transitivity/equivalence (BC/CB), and 8 out of 16 for intraverbals. Results suggest that the S-MTS procedure may serve as an alternative to simultaneous MTS in the development of auditory equivalence classes.