Expansion of functional classes by exclusion performance with university students

• Grant number: 18/17735-7
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Start date: February 01, 2019
• End date: July 31, 2020
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Psychology - Experimental Psychology
• Principal Investigator: Andréia Schmidt
• Grantee: Lara Saizaki Ueno
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Ciências e Letras de Ribeirão Preto (FFCLRP). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Ribeirão Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

When stimuli arbitrarily related evoke the same response, they form a functional class. In these cases, any change to the contingencies applied to one of the elements is transferred to the others (function transference), and this is the main practice that allows us to infer the establishment of these classes on the organisms. The expansion of stimuli classes occurs by direct training, but there is evidence that equivalence classes can be enlarged by exclusion performance. However, the same hasn't been tested for functional classes. This study aims verifying the establishment and possible expansion of functional classes by exclusion performance in humans. Therefore, three simple simultaneous discriminations will be directly trained, so that two classes formed by three stimuli each (one of the classes should have a positive function, and the other a negative one). Repeated reversals will be applied to these stimuli to test the formation of classes. After that, two new stimuli will be trained and their functions will be determined by exclusion performance. To verify if these new stimuli were included in the previous classes, a new reversal will be executed: if the participant responds according to the contingency previous to the reversal, the stimuli pairs will have been learned independently, and the formation of classes will not have occurred; responding according to the present contingency, therefore, after the reversal, will comprise the establishment of functional classes.