Effects of Instructions on Stimulus Equivalence Responding

The role of instructions in stimulus equivalence research has often been discussed without being considerably empirically investigated. Generally, as little information as possible are given to participants, to limit the potential effects of instructions on stimulus equivalence responding. In this present stimulus equivalence experiment, instructions are investigated by using a linear series training structure with three 3-member classes. Participants were assigned to either one of three conditions, consisting of: general instructions (e.g., “your task is to find out which stimuli that belongs together”), specific instructions (e.g., “this stimulus is a fish and belongs together with the car which is this stimulus”) or a control group without instructions about the task. The depended measures are number of training trials and equivalence responding. The results show that the condition with general instructions gave a higher result of equivalence responding (i.e., 58 %) compared to the other conditions (i.e., 8 % and 8 %, respectively).