Analysis of apparent demonstrations of responding in accordance with relational frames of sameness and opposition
Same and opposite relational answers can come from plain equivalence and exclusion—no new relational frames required.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Alonso‐Álvarez et al. (2018) tested 12 college students in a lab. They gave them conditional-discrimination lessons with two extra cues, X1 and X2.
The cues told the students when to treat two pictures as the same or as opposites. Later the team checked if the students picked new pairs without being taught.
What they found
The students' choices followed the cues, but the pattern looked like ordinary equivalence and exclusion. No extra 'sameness frame' or 'opposite frame' was needed.
In plain words: same and opposite answers can come from basic match-to-sample rules we already know.
How this fits with other research
Anonymous (1993) already showed that adults build equivalence classes by learning what NOT to pick. The 2018 study adds that this 'negative-comparison' trick can also create 'opposite' performances.
Rapport et al. (1996) used the same match-to-sample setup and asked students what they were doing. Their verbal reports matched the data most of the time, giving us confidence that the 2018 results are not just blind button pushing.
van Schrojenstein Lantman-de Valk et al. (2006) tried to grow equivalence classes in pigeons and failed. The human success in 2018 reminds us that language-ready brains can do things pigeon brains cannot.
Why it matters
If you teach conditional discriminations, you may not need to program special 'relational frames' for same and opposite. Check first whether simple equivalence, nonequivalence, and exclusion explain the performance. This keeps your task simpler and your data cleaner.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
We evaluated whether contextual control over equivalence and nonequivalence and responding by exclusion can explain the outcomes of relational frame theory (RFT) studies on sameness and opposition relations. We trained nine college students to maintain and reverse conditional discriminations with X1 and X2 as contextual stimuli. In Experiment 1, X1 and X2 controlled derived stimulus relations (DSR) analogous to those controlled by Same and Opposite in RFT studies. These results can be explained by at least two hypotheses: X1 and X2 were cues for equivalence and nonequivalence and responding by exclusion, or for sameness and opposition. In Experiment 2, X1 and X2 controlled DSR predicted by the hypothesis that they were cues for equivalence and nonequivalence and responding by exclusion, and not predicted by the hypothesis that they were cues for sameness and opposition. The results of Experiment 2 and the functional equivalence of X1 and X2 with Same and Opposite in Experiment 1 suggest that Same and Opposite were cues for equivalence and nonequivalence and responding by exclusion in RFT studies.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jeab.458