The Establishment of Visual Equivalence Classes with a Go/No-Go Successive Matching-to-Sample Procedure

Abstract

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure with a go/no-go preparation to establish three 3-member classes of visual stimuli with 24 undergraduate college students. At the start of each trial, participants touched a sample stimulus after which a comparison immediately appeared in the same location on the screen. Then, depending on the relation between sample and comparison, participants were required to either touch the comparison (i.e., go) or to refrain from touching it (i.e., no-go). The comparison remained on the screen for 8 s independent of participants’ responses. Following training of baseline relations (AB/BC), responses to untrained relations (i.e., BA/CB and AC/CA) were assessed. Overall, 22 out of 24 participants met emergence criterion on AC/CA tests, with reaction times to comparisons below 5 s indicating that S-MTS may be a viable alternative to traditional MTS to establish equivalence classes.