Coding responses and the generalization of matching to sample in children.
Stable naming responses are the engine that drives generalized matching-to-sample in children.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Four children played a matching game on a computer.
Each trial showed a sample shape at the top and two choices below.
The kids had to pick the choice that was rotated 90 degrees from the sample.
First the children learned to name the sample's orientation out loud.
Then they practiced matching while still saying the name.
The goal was to see if the naming skill would help them match new shapes they had never seen before.
What they found
When the children said the orientation names correctly and used them to guide their choices, they matched new shapes at 90 degrees almost perfectly.
If a child started guessing instead of using the names, their accuracy dropped.
Quick retraining on the naming step fixed the problem right away.
The study showed that the naming response was the key that unlocked generalization to new examples.
How this fits with other research
Cohen (1969) and Howard (1979) first showed that pigeons could match new stimuli without extra training.
The 1984 study takes this bird work and proves it works for children when you add a clear naming step.
Collier et al. (1986) found that moving stimuli around the screen can break some discriminations.
The 1984 study avoids this pitfall by keeping the sample in the center and only rotating the comparison shapes.
Ayres-Pereira et al. (2025) later showed adults can learn equivalence classes with almost identical pictures.
This 1984 work is the child-sized version—using clear orientation labels instead of picture similarity to build the same kind of flexible responding.
Why it matters
You can teach flexible matching skills without drilling every possible example.
First teach a stable naming response for the key feature.
Then make sure the child uses that name to guide every choice.
If generalization breaks down, go back to the naming step for a quick fix.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Two experiments studied the conditions of stimulus control necessary for the generalization of relational matching to sample. Matching required the selection of comparison shapes rotated 90 degrees clockwise from the orientation of the corresponding sample. In Experiment 1, five children were taught to: (a) code the orientations of samples, (b) transform sample codings to account for the 90 degree rotation, and (c) repeat the transformed sample coding response to a comparison. High levels of generalization occurred with a set of novel stimuli for which stable sample-coding responses were initially available. In another novel set, where stable sample-coding responses were not initially available, low levels of generalized matching were recorded. Matching performance improved after stable coding responses were trained. In Experiment 2, two children and three adults were trained in a form of the matching task that produced poor generalization despite the presence of stable sample-coding responses. Retraining to modify the stimulus control exerted by these coding responses produced an immediate improvement in generalized matching to sample. Results suggest that the generalization of matching is dependent on structure of stimulus control that the component responses exert on each other.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 1984 · doi:10.1901/jeab.1984.42-1