Abstract

BAGAIOLO, Leila Felippe  and  MICHELETTO, Nilza. Fading and exclusion: acquisition of conditional discrimination and formation of equivalence relations. Temas psicol. [online]. 2004, vol.12, n.2, pp. 168-185. ISSN 1413-389X.

The goal of the present study was (1) to assess the performance of participants exposed to Fading and Exclusion Procedures during the acquisition of auditory-visual conditional relations of written words, spoken words, and pictures, and (2) to evaluate the emergence of equivalent stimulus classes involving the trained stimuli. Six participants, between 4 and 5 years of age, were exposed to training of conditional discriminations. Training occurred through either a 4 steps Fading procedure - using incorrect comparison stimuli- or through a 4 steps Exclusion procedure. All participants were trained on the same stimuli sets, and all participants were exposed to both training procedures. After training all participants were exposed to tests for the emergence of equivalence classes. The stimuli sets trained with either procedure and the order of training was balanced among participants. A general analysis of the data indicated that more errors occurred during the Fading condition than during the Exclusion condition (respectively, 36 and 19 errors); the smaller amount of errors during Exclusion was predominant when that condition had been provided in the last part of the training. A molecular analysis of every participant, at each attempt, showed different acquisition patterns of conditional relations. The participants’ performance in the equivalence tests revealed that equivalent stimuli classes were generated after both, the Fading training procedure as well as the Exclusion training condition.

Keywords : Fading; Conditional discrimination; Fading; Exclusion; Equivalence relations.

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