Association for Behavior Analysis International

An account of complex symbolic behavior depends on understanding how emergent behavior comes about. Therefore, we aim to examine and discuss some behavioral features of derived responding. The first presentation investigates the establishment of comparison relations through the Go/No-Go procedure without Non-Arbitrary Relational Training (NART). Three participants succeeded in the tests for emergent relations. These results invite a discussion about the role of the NART usually employed in RFT studies. The second presentation investigates differences in response latencies for trained and derived relations. It analyzes large data of participants who passed a test for three four-member equivalence classes following one-to-many baseline training or direct training of the tested relations. The results suggest longer latencies for derived responses, mostly driven by transitivity trials. We discuss how these results expanded on the previous literature about response latencies and derived responses. Finally, the third presentation investigates the establishment of sameness and opposition relations among arbitrary stimuli through intraverbal naming. Four participants were exposed to tact and intraverbal training. After training, we tested for the emergence of verbal and non-verbal stimulus relations while analyzing its consistency with normative rules. The results indicate that autoclitics play a major role in establishing verbally mediated derived responses.

Studies addressing comparative relations usually begin with training and testing of non-arbitrary relational in which conditional discriminations between physically similar stimuli are placed under contextual cues. The aim of the present study was to verify whether the Go/No-Go procedure with compound stimuli would establish comparative relations between stimuli (e.g., larger-than and smaller-than) without the Non-Arbitrary Relational Training and Testing phase. Arbitrary Relational Training was conducted to establish specific conditional relations between pairs of stimuli, guided by contextual cues (X1-A1A2, X1-A2A3, X2-A2A1, and X2-A3A2), and derived relations were tested (X1-A1A3 and X2-A3A1). Additional relations (X1-A3A4, and X2-A4A3) were then taught, followed by testing of all possible emergent relations (X1-A1A3, X1-A2A4, X2-A3A1, X2-A4A2, X1-A1A4, X2-A4A1). All three participants, who were adults and university students, met the training criterion and demonstrated the emergence of the tested relations. The implications of these results for the development of instructional technology and conceptual understanding are discussed.

Prior research has demonstrated that intraverbal naming plays a crucial role and may be sufficient for stimulus class formation and the emergence of derived responding in human participants. From a normative perspective, the relational properties of stimuli are described through autoclitic frames. This study aimed to test this concept by exposing four adult participants to a pre/post-test design. During the procedure, participants were taught to tact arbitrary stimuli and relate the names of two distinct sets of stimuli according to two specific autoclitic frames: “Equal to…” (i.e., sameness) and “Opposite to…” (i.e., opposition). After training on baseline relations (A1=B1, B1=C1, A2¬B2, B2¬C2), the emergence of target relations (B1=A1, C1=B1, A1=C1, C1=A1, B2¬A2, C2¬B2, A2¬C2, C2¬A2) was assessed using match-to-sample and intraverbal post-tests. Results revealed notable variability between subjects, alongside within-subject consistency between verbal and non-verbal behavior. We discuss the relationship between autoclitics, derived responding, and the emergence of complex logical relations among stimuli, suggesting that autoclitic frames play a crucial role in stimulus class formation through intraverbal naming. Additionally, we highlight procedural aspects of the experiment and suggest directions for future research to expand on these findings.