Abstract

COSTA, Aline Roberta Aceituno da; SCHMIDT, Andréia; DOMENICONI, Camila  and  SOUZA, Deisy das Graças de. Simultaneous and delayed matching to sample: implications for stimulus equivalence demonstration by children. Temas psicol. [online]. 2013, vol.21, n.2, pp. 469-482. ISSN 1413-389X.  http://dx.doi.org/10.9788/TP2013.2-13.

Delayed matching to sample (DMTS) has been used to teach conditional relations, to test emergent relations between stimuli and to test the maintenance of these performances. The literature, however, presents controversial data on this topic, especially when participants are children or people with cognitive deficits. The aim of this study was to examine, after teaching a baseline of conditional relations with simultaneous matching to sample (SMTS), the performance of preschool children in probes for the emergence of equivalence classes under two different conditions: DMTS tasks and SMTS tasks. Three preschool children learned through SMTS tasks, conditional relationships between visual stimuli and between auditory stimuli and visual stimuli (relations AB, BC, CD, DE). In equivalence probes conducted with DMTS of zero seconds (relations EB, EC and DB) no child met criteria for training classes, but there was no disturbance of performance in baseline trials. The baseline was retrained, and them, SMTS tasks tested the emergence of equivalence classes. All three children showed emergence of the novel conditional relations. The three children presented emergence of the tested conditional relations. Precurrent behavior in matching to sample tasks and the importance of the specific characteristics of the participants in the organization of teaching procedures of conditional relations were discussed.

Keywords : Simultaneous matching to sample; delayed matching to sample; stimulus equivalence; children.

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