Elsevier

Behavioural Processes

Volume 77, Issue 1, January 2008, Pages 7-32
Behavioural Processes

Concept formation based on value relations evaluated with a matching-to-sample procedure

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2007.05.008Get rights and content

Abstract

To study concept formation based on relations, adults were taught and tested on complex discriminations involving figures that varied in colors, forms, and orientations. In Experiment 1, participants learned to select figures with values A1 and B1 or values B1 and C1; thereafter, they consistently selected figures with values A1 and C1. Selections were based on the relations among the values, rather than on perceptual properties. Experiments 2 and 3 studied generalization with a matching-to-sample procedure: participants learned to select “yes” in the presence of the positive figures, such as A1B1, and “no” in the presence of the negative figures. Thereafter, all figures that resulted from combining three values of the three relevant dimensions were probed. Participants typically selected “yes” in the presence of the novel figures that had two or three values related to one another and selected “no” in the presence of the other figures. Finally, two participants learned a simple discrimination. They did not generalize responding to other figures with the same values; instead, their performance in the generalization test remained almost unaltered. Thus, the concept based on relations was not affected by the simple discrimination. These results showed some unique properties of the concept based on relations and challenge previous theories on concept formation.

Section snippets

Experiment 1

This experiment replicated Pérez-González's (2001) as a prerequisite for further teaching more complex discriminations and testing with novel figures. In this experiment, there were two protocols. In the first protocol, the AB and BC discriminations were taught, as in Pérez-González's experiment (see Fig. 1). However, the BA relations were tested just after teaching the AB relations and the CB relations were tested just after teaching the BC relations. In the second protocol, the AB and CB

Experiment 2

The main goal of Experiment 2 was to use the yes/no procedure with the multi-component figures to analyze generalization of responding to figures that were not used in teaching with the yes/no procedure. The format used for teaching was matching-to-sample, where the samples were the four AB figures of Experiment 1 and the comparisons were two novel stimuli. After learning this conditional discrimination, the samples were the remaining figures of Experiment 1 (the BC and AC figures). It was

Experiment 3

Experiment 2 demonstrated selections between the X1 (yes) and X2 (no) comparisons in the presence of figures that did not appear with X1 and X2 in teaching. All the figures in which presence participants selected “yes” can be considered members of a concept; also, all the figures in which presence participants selected “no” can be considered non-members of the concept. The concept, thus, was formed by the figures with two values of the same class. In other words, class relationship among the

Summary of results

In the tests of Experiment 1, participants selected novel figures composed of two values of figures that they had learned to select during teaching. Every value was present both in the selected and the non-selected figures. Thus, selection of figures could not be based on the presence of a particular value or in the presence of a given number of particular values. Instead, the figure selection was based on the relations established among the values. The results of Experiment 1 directly and

Acknowledgments

This work was supported in part by Grant SEJ2006-08055 of the Spanish administration. Part of this research was presented at the Third European Meeting on Experimental Analysis of Behaviour, held in Dublin, Ireland, July 1997. I specially acknowledge Gladys Williams and Douglas Greer for reviewing previous versions of this paper, and to the participants in the experiments.

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