A transfer of functions through derived arbitrary and nonarbitrary stimulus relations.
Train one stimulus, test the class, and watch the response rule hop to untrained members—no extra teaching needed.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four adults learned to press a button fast or slow when they saw certain shapes.
The shapes were linked in equivalence classes through matching-to-sample drills.
Researchers then checked if the speed rule moved to new shapes that were only related through equivalence, not direct training.
What they found
Every person kept the fast or slow pace when they saw the untrained, equivalent shapes.
The rule jumped the gap—no extra teaching was needed.
Even shapes that looked nothing alike passed the control, proving the transfer was truly derived.
How this fits with other research
Hopkinson et al. (2003) later showed kids with profound ID and almost no words can still build equivalence classes.
That widens the door: the 1993 transfer effect may work for learners who can’t name the links.
Haimson et al. (2009) peeked inside the brain and found the equivalence pattern shows up only after the test, not during training.
Together the studies say: test your classes—passing the probes is what locks the network and lets the function hop.
Why it matters
You can teach one stimulus to control behavior and let equivalence do the rest.
Picture teaching a client to request “break” with one card; after equivalence training, the same mand may emerge with an untrained color or room cue.
Always run the equivalence test—without it the neural and behavioral data agree the class isn’t solid yet.
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Join Free →After your learner masters the target stimulus, run a quick matching-to-sample test with the equivalent set and probe if the skill appears without prompts.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
During Experiments 1 and 2, subjects were trained in a series of related conditional discriminations in a matching-to-sample format (A1-B1, A1-C1 and A2-B2, A2-C2). A low-rate performance was then explicitly trained in the presence of B1, and a high-rate performance was explicitly trained in the presence of B2. The two types of schedule performance transferred to the C stimuli for all subjects in both experiments, in the absence of explicit reinforcement through equivalence (i.e., C1 = low rate and C2 = high rate). In Experiment 2, it was also shown that these discriminative functions transferred from the C1-C2 stimuli to two novel stimuli that were physically similar to the C stimuli (SC1 and SC2, respectively). For both these experiments, subjects demonstrated the predicted equivalence responding during matching-to-sample equivalence tests. In Experiments 3 and 4, the conditional discrimination training from the first two experiments was modified in that two further conditional discrimination tasks were trained (C1-D1 and C2-D2). However, for these tasks the D stimuli served only as positive comparisons, and ND1 and ND2 stimuli served as negative comparisons (i.e., C1 x ND1 and C2 x ND2). Subsequent to training, the negatively related stimuli (ND1 and ND2) did not become discriminative for the schedule performances explicitly trained in the presence of B1 and B2, respectively. Instead, the ND1 stimulus became discriminative for the schedule performance trained in the presence of B2, and ND2 became discriminative for the schedule performance trained in the presence of B1. All subjects from Experiment 4 showed that the novel stimulus SND1, which was physically similar to ND1, became discriminative for the same response pattern as that controlled by ND1. Similarly, SND2, which was physically similar to ND2, became discriminative for the same response pattern as that controlled by ND2. Subjects from both Experiments 3 and 4 also produced equivalence responding on matching-to-sample equivalence tests that corresponded perfectly to the derived performances shown on the transfer of discriminative control tests.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1993 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1993.59-61