Establishing derived reinforcers via stimulus equivalence

Shawler et al. (2022) taught six adults to match four nonsense pictures into one family. One picture was already a reinforcer because it earned money. After training, the team asked the adults to choose which pictures they now liked to play for.

The goal was to see if the money power would hop to the other pictures through equivalence.

Five of the six adults picked the new pictures as reinforcers. They worked for pictures that had never given money before. The reinforcing power moved through the equivalence class.

Tantam et al. (1993) first showed that control can jump through equivalence. They trained one stimulus to control response rate, and the untrained partners did the same. Shawler et al. (2022) now show the jump works for reinforcer value too.

O’Connor et al. (2020) used the same method with children with autism. They taught emotion-to-person links instead of reinforcers. Both studies show the procedure works across ages and diagnoses.

Busch et al. (2010) and Ruiz‐Sánchez et al. (2019) warn that equivalence can create false memories. Their adults recalled words that were never shown. Shawler’s result looks opposite—useful instead of harmful—but the mechanism is the same: stimuli in a class share functions.

You can build new reinforcers without food or money. Link a token, emoji, or song to an already loved item through equivalence. After a short matching game, the new item may keep its power for days. This gives you more tools when preferred objects are scarce or when clients tire of the same rewards.