Investigando o efeito das regras sobre a formação de classes de equivalência

Abstract

The interaction between two important behavioral variables was investigated, as well as the rules and training in conditional discrimination tasks (MTS) that promote the symbolic emergence known as stimulus equivalence. Therefore, three experiments were carried out, which consisted in the execution of discrimination tasks involving abstract stimuli with university students as participants. Experiment I consisted in the training of rules that could promote the reversal of previously established classes in MTS. The results of Experiment I suggest that the rules were ineffective. Experiment II consisted in the training only with rules and testing in MTS tasks involving emerging relationships. The results of Experiment II suggest that the training with rules was effective for the establishment of equivalent classes. Experiment III involved the MTS training, as in Experiment I, and the reversion training with rules, using the procedure of Experiment II. The results of Experiment III suggest that only two of the ten participants responded according to the rules. In short, the results of the three experiments reinforce the conclusion that equivalence classes are resistant to reversal training with rules. However, another interesting result was the effectiveness of training with rules in establishing equivalence classes.