Moles, Melanomas, and Stimulus Control

Stimulus control is essential to reduce the prevalence of malignant melanoma. Annually, 2000 people in Norway are diagnosed with malignant melanoma—around 400 of them. die. We will present participants who entered our experiment, unable to discriminate between harmful and harmless moles. A few hours training matching-to-sample tasks, enabled all participants to discriminate successfully. The participants established stimulus control by recognizing the different categories of moles. Additionally, the participants responded in accordance with equivalence. The study was submitted to The Norwegian Cancer Association was informed about the findings and the promising results were presented to cancer researchers, and to the Health Directorate, in a consensus meeting arranged by the Cancer Association. Furthermore, the study contributed in a national campaign which the Cancer Association launched to promote measures needed to the control of skin cancer. We launched the SAFE test.