Department of Psychology, University of Oviedo, Oviedo, Spain.
Instituto de Neurociencias, University of Guadalajara, Guadalajara, México.
J Exp Anal Behav. 2023 Nov;120(3):376-393. doi: 10.1002/jeab.877. Epub 2023 Sep 20.
We hypothesized that a three-sample conditional discrimination can emerge as a result of learning conditional discriminations with relational stimuli. After learning three first-order conditional discriminations AB, PQ, and CD, we taught a second-order conditional discrimination XAB in which X1 indicated selection of related stimuli (e.g., A1 and B1) and X2 of unrelated stimuli (e.g., A1 and B2). Then, we probed the emergence of conditional discriminations PQX and XCD in which the X stimuli were comparisons and contextual stimuli, respectively. Finally, a conditional discrimination was probed with stimuli P, Q, and C as samples and D1 and D2 as comparisons. When the P and Q stimuli were related (and related to X1 in PQX), all participants selected the D stimulus that was related to the C stimulus (D1 when C1 was present and D2 when C2 was present); when the P and Q stimuli were unrelated (and related to X2 in PQX), they selected the D stimulus unrelated to the C stimulus (D2 when C1 and D1 when C2), which demonstrated emergence based on the relations established among all stimuli. In Experiment 2, the teaching of XAB was omitted and only one in six participants demonstrated emergence, which indicated that relational stimuli X1 and X2 played an important role in emergence. Thus, a new type of emergence that mimics analogical reasoning was demonstrated. The obtained outcome suggests that this procedure provides a learning foundation for acquiring reasoning capabilities.
我们假设，通过学习具有关系刺激的条件辨别，可以出现三样本条件辨别。在学习了三个一阶条件辨别 AB、PQ 和 CD 之后，我们教授了二阶条件辨别 XAB，其中 X1 表示选择相关刺激（例如 A1 和 B1），X2 表示选择无关刺激（例如 A1 和 B2）。然后，我们探测了条件辨别 PQX 和 XCD 的出现，其中 X 刺激分别是比较刺激和上下文刺激。最后，用 P、Q 和 C 作为样本，D1 和 D2 作为比较，探测条件辨别。当 P 和 Q 刺激相关（并且在 PQX 中与 X1 相关）时，所有参与者都选择与 C 刺激相关的 D 刺激（当 C1 存在时选择 D1，当 C2 存在时选择 D2）；当 P 和 Q 刺激不相关（并且在 PQX 中与 X2 相关）时，他们选择与 C 刺激不相关的 D 刺激（当 C1 和 D1 存在时选择 D2，当 C2 和 D2 存在时选择 D2），这表明基于所有刺激之间建立的关系出现了辨别。在实验 2 中，省略了 XAB 的教学，只有六分之一的参与者表现出了辨别，这表明关系刺激 X1 和 X2 在辨别中起着重要作用。因此，模拟类比推理的新类型辨别出现了。得出的结果表明，这种程序为获得推理能力提供了学习基础。
