Expansion of Classes, Transfer of Function, and Preference Tests in Adult Participants

Abstract

The purpose of the experiment was to study the effect of transfer of function on preferences on different stimuli conditions in 15 adults. Participants were trained on six conditional discriminations arranged as one-to-many training (AB/AC) and tested for the emergence of three 3-member equivalence classes. Fourteen of 15 participants passed the equivalence test. For the 14 participants, the classes were expanded by training three new stimuli GOOD (D1), NEUTRAL (D2), and BAD (D3), to A1, A2, and A3 and followed by a test equivalence class formation including all relations. The participants were also tested for the preference of the B-stimuli before the conditional discrimination training and after the test for expansion of classes. In the preference test after the expansion test, participants were presented with the three B-stimuli mounted on pictures of identical objects in groups of three (three stimulus conditions). The pictures of objects were three identical soda cans, cars, and mobile phones. The main findings were that 3 of 14 participants picked B1 in the pretest while 8 of 14 participants picked B1 for all stimulus sets in the preference test.