Manual-Observing Procedure: an Alternative to the Investigation of Stimulus Control and Equivalence Classes in Matching-to-Sample

Author(s)

Dillon Soares-Filho, Paulo Sergio ^{[1, 2]} ; de Carvalho, Ligia Mosolino ^[1] ; de Moraes Hamasaki, Eliana Isabel ^[3] ; Campos, Heloisa Cursi ^{[1, 4]} ; Perez, William Ferreira ^{[1, 5]} ; Arntzen, Erik ^[6] ; Tomanari, Gerson Yukio ^[1]

Affiliation

^[1] Univ Sao Paulo, Inst Psychol, Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[2] Univ San Buenaventura, Carrera 8H 172-20, 1721, Bogota, DC - Colombia

^[3] Univ 9 Julho, Sao Paulo, SP - Brazil

^[4] Arkansas State Univ, Jonesboro, AR - USA

^[5] Paradigma Ctr Ciencias Comportamento, Sao Paulo - Brazil

^[6] Oslo Metropolitan Univ, Oslo - Norway

• Document type: Journal article
• Source: PSYCHOLOGICAL RECORD; v. 69, n. 2, p. 165-174, JUN 2019.
• Web of Science Citations: 0

Abstract

This experiment presents a manual-observing procedure as an inexpensive alternative for investigating stimulus control and establishing equivalence classes in a matching-to-sample task (MTS). To illustrate the procedure, we evaluated the effects of different MTS training structures on observing responses and equivalence class formation. Participants had to press a button below each covered sample and comparison stimuli to reveal the stimulus. Four participants were exposed to two different sequences of the many-to-one (MTO) and one-to-many (OTM) procedures, using the manual-observing procedure during training and testing. The results showed that the manual-observing procedure allowed participants to acquire conditional discriminations and form equivalence classes, suggesting that the use of manual-observing responses in an MTS procedure is a useful procedure to evaluate stimulus control in an MTS task. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 08/57705-8 - Institute for the Study of Behavior, Cognition and Teaching
• Grantee: Deisy das Graças de Souza
• Support Opportunities: Research Projects - Thematic Grants