Presence and Absence of Familiar Pictures in Emergent Relations Testing

Past experiments have found that, the inclusion of at least a meaningful stimulus in a class of abstract stimuli influences the probability of equivalence class formation. Experiments so far have tested the effect of meaningful stimuli on equivalence class formation by training and testing emergent relations with the inclusion of meaningful stimuli. This study examined the effect of the inclusion of meaningful stimuli in training but without it in emergent relations testing on equivalence class formation. Forty five college students were randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: Abstract (ABS), with C1, C2, and C3 as Pictures in test (W-C-as-Pic), and Without C1, C2, and C3 as Pictures in test (Wo-C-as-Pic). The findings from this experiment are that 20% and 33.33% of participants in ABS formed classes in the immediate and delayed tests blocks, respectively. Also, 66.67% and 93.33% of participants in W-C-as-Pic formed classes in the immediate and delayed tests blocks respectively. In Wo-C-as-Pic, 66.67% and 93.33% of participants formed classes in the immediate and delayed tests blocks, respectively. Also, there was no significant difference between performance of participants in W-C-as-Pic and Wo-C-as-Pic.