Relations among equivalence, naming, and conflicting baseline control.
New rules that clash with old equivalence links can break the class, and naming alone won’t save it.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team taught college students three-stimulus equivalence classes (A1-B1-C1, A2-B2-C2).
Next they added new rules that pitted the old links against fresh ones (A1→B2, A2→B1).
Half the students also learned to name every picture; the rest got no naming prompt.
Researchers then checked if the original classes still held or fell apart.
What they found
After the conflicting training, most students failed the old equivalence tests.
Naming the pictures gave no shield; classes broke whether students could name them or not.
In short, later contradictory teaching can wreck earlier stimulus classes.
How this fits with other research
Silguero et al. (2023) repeated the conflict idea 22 years later and saw the same thing: the clashing stimuli stayed inside the class instead of dropping out.
Frampton et al. (2023) tried a fix—adults drew graphic organizers while learning. Their classes held 100 % of the time, showing the damage is not inevitable if you add a visual mediator.
Davison et al. (2002) showed you can teach people to switch class use on cue, but it took lots of extra trials. Together the four papers say: equivalence is sturdy until you stack new rules against it, then it needs extra help to survive.
Why it matters
If you run matching-to-sample or equivalence lessons, watch for later programs that teach opposite links. A simple naming prompt won’t protect the class. Instead, add a mediator like a graphic organizer, or re-check equivalence probes after any new conditional training. This keeps hard-won stimulus classes from quietly crumbling.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Three studies were conducted with different groups of 6 students each to explore the effects of training class-inconsistent relations and naming on demonstrations of emergent arbitrary stimulus relations. In all studies, two three-member equivalence classes of Greek symbols (A1B1C1 and A2B2C2) emerged as a result of training in conditional discriminations. Two new symbols were introduced (X and Y), and additional conditional discriminations were trained, whereby X was designated as the positive discriminative stimulus (S+) and Y was designated as the negative discriminative stimulus (S-) for A1 and B2. Conversely, Y was designated as the S+ and X as the S- for B1 and A2. This introduced conflicting sources of control within and between classes. In Study 1, subjects were not provided with names for the stimuli. In Study 2, the experimenter provided common names for the stimuli within each class. In Study 3, the subjects were required to use the common names during conditional discrimination training and test-trial blocks. In all experiments, equivalence responding with respect to the original classes was disrupted for some subjects subsequent to learning the new relations. Furthermore, in Studies 2 and 3, there were frequent examples of noncorrespondence between observed (listener or speaker) naming patterns and derived relations. These results support the view that demonstrations of equivalence are subject to control from a variety of sources rather than being fundamentally dependent on naming.
Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 2001 · doi:10.1901/jeab.2001.75-55