Transfer of function across members of an equivalence class

Abstract

A child's presses on response windows behind which stimuli were presented via computer monitor occasionally lit lamps arranged in a column; a present was delivered when all lamps in the column were lit. During the operation of a multiple schedule, the child first learned low rates of pressing in the presence of STAR and high rates in the presence of TREE. Later, in an arbitrary matching task, the child learned to select STAR given wiggly WORM and TREE given BLOCK. When WORM and BLOCK were inserted into the multiple schedule, the low and high rates respectively correlated with STAR and TREE transferred to them. Tests of reflexivity (identity matching) and of symmetry of the arbitrary matching implied that STAR and WORM had become members of one equivalence class, and TREE and BLOCK had become members of another.