Using equivalence‐based instruction to teach piano skills to college students
Equivalence-based instruction lets college students play new piano chords without practicing each one.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Six college students with no piano training joined a campus lab.
The team used equivalence-based instruction (EBI) to link three things: a chord symbol on paper, the chord name spoken aloud, and the correct piano keys.
Students first learned a few taught matches with a computer.
The program then tested if they could play new chords they had never practiced.
What they found
All six students played the new chords correctly on the first try.
They also read and named chords they had only seen during testing.
Most learners reached mastery in under two hours with no direct drill on every chord.
How this fits with other research
Griffith et al. (2012) got the same emergent learning with kids who are blind.
They taught coin feel-to-name links and the children then named coins without extra training.
Both studies show that once you wire a few relations, the rest appear for free.
Wilkins et al. (2009) used chaining, not equivalence, to teach long verbal replies.
Their step-by-step method worked, but it needed many practice trials.
EBI gives the same final skill with fewer practice steps because the brain fills in the gaps.
Why it matters
You can use EBI to pack more learning into less time.
Pick a skill that has clear stimulus sets, such as sight words, medication names, or data-sheet codes.
Teach a few trained relations with a tablet or flashcards, then probe for the untaught ones.
If the probes pass, your learner just gained a whole set of skills without extra drilling.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of equivalence-based instruction (EBI) on the emergence of basic music reading and piano playing skills. Six female college students learned to identify three musical chord notations given their respective dictated names. Participants also learned to play chords on the piano following the dictated name of the chord, and to play the chords to a song on a keyboard. Results are consistent with past research, in that stimuli became substitutable for each other and acquired a common behavioral function. Data suggest that EBI was an effective and efficient procedure to teach adults to read musical notation, as well as play chords and a song on a piano keyboard.
Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jaba.438