Leader, Barnes-Holmes, & Smeets, 2000
Leader, G., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Smeets, P. M. (2000). Establishing equivalence relations using a respondent-type procedure III. The Psychological Record, 50, 63-78.
The authors (researchers at the National University of Ireland, University of Ulster, and Leiden University) conducted a study in which 12, 5-year-old normal functioning children were exposed to a respondent-type training procedure and tested for emergent conditional discriminations. During respondent-type training, arbitrary stimuli were presented in pairs, one at a time, using a table-top procedure. On a given trial, for example, the arbitrary stimulus A1 was presented on an observation card for I s, followed by the arbitrary stimulus B1 presented on another observation card for 1 s (represented as A1 arrow right B1). Emergent conditional discriminations were tested using a standard matching-to-sample procedure. The study demonstrated that respondent-type training is an effective means of generating equivalence classes with young children. Results also showed that it is possible to extend an equivalence.