Nedelcu Roxana I, Fields Lanny, Arntzen Erik
The Graduate School of the City University of New York (CUNY).
J Exp Anal Behav. 2015 Mar;103(2):349-60. doi: 10.1002/jeab.141.
Equivalence class formation by college students was influenced through the prior acquisition of conditional discriminative functions by one of the abstract stimuli (C) in the to-be-formed classes. Participants in the GR-0, GR-1, and GR-5 groups attempted to form classes under the simultaneous protocol, after mastering 0, 1, or 5 conditional relations between C and other abstract stimuli (V, W, X, Y, Z) that were not included in the to-be-formed classes (ABCDE). Participants in the GR-many group attempted to form classes that contained four abstract stimuli and one meaningful picture as the C stimulus. In the GR-0, GR-1, GR-5, and GR-many groups, classes were formed by 17, 25, 58, and 67% of participants, respectively. Thus, likelihood of class formation was enhanced by the prior formation of five C-based conditional relations (the GR-5 vs. GR-0 condition), or the inclusion of a meaningful stimulus as a class member (the GR-many vs. GR-0 condition). The GR-5 and GR-many conditions produced very similar yields, indicating that class formation was enhanced to a similar degree by including a meaningful stimulus or an abstract stimulus that had become a member of five conditional relations prior to equivalence class formation. Finally, the low and high yields produced by the GR-1 and GR-5 conditions showed that the class enhancement effect of the GR-5 condition was due to the number of conditional relations established during preliminary training and not to the sheer amount of reinforcement provided while learning these conditional relations. Class enhancement produced by meaningful stimuli, then, can be attributed to their acquired conditional discriminative functions as well as their discriminative, connotative, and denotative properties.
大学生的等价类形成受到待形成类中一个抽象刺激（C）先前获得的条件性辨别功能的影响。GR - 0、GR - 1和GR - 5组的参与者在掌握C与其他未包含在待形成类（ABCDE）中的抽象刺激（V、W、X、Y、Z）之间的0、1或5种条件关系后，尝试在同时呈现协议下形成类。GR - many组的参与者尝试形成包含四个抽象刺激和一个有意义图片作为C刺激的类。在GR - 0、GR - 1、GR - 5和GR - many组中，分别有17%、25%、58%和67%的参与者形成了类。因此，通过先前形成基于C的五种条件关系（GR - 5与GR - 0条件），或包含一个有意义的刺激作为类成员（GR - many与GR - 0条件），类形成的可能性得到了提高。GR - 5和GR - many条件产生了非常相似的结果，表明通过包含一个有意义的刺激或一个在等价类形成之前已成为五种条件关系成员的抽象刺激，类形成在相似程度上得到了增强。最后，GR - 1和GR - 5条件产生的低产量和高产量表明，GR - 5条件的类增强效应是由于初步训练期间建立的条件关系数量，而不是学习这些条件关系时提供的强化量。那么，有意义刺激产生的类增强可归因于它们获得的条件性辨别功能以及它们的辨别、内涵和外延属性。
