The go/no‐go successive matching task and the emergence of arbitrary relational responding: A review

Ayres‐Pereira et al. (2025) pooled every published paper that used the go/no-go successive matching task. They asked: how often do humans and non-humans show symmetry, transitivity, and full equivalence after this procedure?

The team coded outcomes from dozens of single-case experiments. Most subjects were neurotypical adults, but pigeons, rats, and a few children were also in the mix.

Across studies, 87.5 % of human participants showed symmetry after GNG training. Full equivalence emerged about 59 % of the time. Non-human scores were lower and jumpier—some birds passed symmetry, others did not, and almost no animals had transitivity data reported.

In short, GNG matching is a reliable symmetry maker for people, but a shakier bet for animals.

Bailey (2008) and Campos et al. (2014) fit the pattern: pigeons that got successive GNG did show symmetry, while birds trained with standard two-choice matching often failed. The review now shows this is not a fluke—successive format really is the key for non-humans.

Modenesi et al. (2026) extend the story to college students using compound stimuli. Their subjects passed derived asymmetric and transitive tests without any non-arbitrary prep. The review’s human numbers back up that positive finding.

Chand et al. (2022) and the 1990s nodality papers (L et al., 1990; L et al., 1995) used match-to-sample instead of GNG. They still land in the same ball-park: humans form equivalence, but one-node relations pop out before two-node ones. The review confirms the nodality effect holds even when you switch the training format to GNG.

If you run equivalence training, GNG matching is a quick road to symmetry for most human learners. For animals, stick to successive trials and keep your hopes modest—transitivity data are scarce. Standardize your mastery criterion (see Fienup et al., 2017) and watch nodal distance: train short chains first, then add nodes. Next session, try a short GNG symmetry probe after only AB training; you may save hours of extra trials.