Transfer of functions based on equivalence class formation using musical stimuli
Music can gift its mood to any picture that joins its equivalence class.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Martins et al. (2023) taught adults to group musical clips with abstract shapes. The music was happy or sad. The shapes had never carried feeling before.
After training, the team asked people to rate the shapes. No music played. The question: would the shapes now feel happy or sad too?
What they found
The shapes took on the mood of their musical partners. Happy-mode shapes were rated happy. Sad-mode shapes were rated sad.
The feelings moved without direct teaching. Once the items were in the same class, the emotion jumped.
How this fits with other research
Amd et al. (2013) saw the same leap earlier. They used EEG and found emotional arousal transferred in milliseconds. Martins shows the jump can start from music, not just pictures.
Tantam et al. (1993) proved any function can hop through equivalence. They used schedule control. Martins widens the rule to feelings carried by sound.
Shawler et al. (2022) made new reinforcers the same way. They linked tokens to praise; the tokens became rewards. Martins swaps reinforcer for emotion and music for praise, yet the process matches.
Why it matters
You can give neutral items emotional weight by pairing them with music the learner already feels. Use a happy jingle while teaching a new icon and the icon may later lift mood on its own. This opens a cheap, quick way to build conditioned reinforcers or calm cues without extra trials.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Empirical evidence has supported that musical excerpts written in major and minor modes are responsible for evoking happiness and sadness, respectively. In this study, we evaluated whether the emotional content evoked by musical stimuli would transfer to abstract figures when they became members of the same equivalence class. Participants assigned to the experimental group were submitted to a training procedure to form equivalence classes comprising musical excerpts (A) and meaningless abstract figures (B, C, and D). Afterward, transfer of function was evaluated using a semantic differential. Participants in the control group showed positive semantic differential scores for major mode musical excerpts, negative scores for minor mode musical excerpts, and neutral scores for the B, C, and D stimuli. Participants in the experimental groups showed positive semantic differential scores for visual stimuli equivalent to the major modes and negative semantic differential scores for visual stimuli equivalent to the minor modes. These results indicate transfer of function of emotional content present in musical stimuli through equivalence class formation. These findings could provide a more comprehensive understanding of the effects of using emotional stimuli in equivalence class formation experiments and in transfer of function itself.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2023 · doi:10.1002/jeab.881