TRANSFER TO DERIVED SAMPLE-COMPARISON RELATIONS BY PIGEONS FOLLOWING MANY-TO-ONE VERSUS ONE-TO-MANY MATCHING WITH IDENTICAL TRAINING RELATIONS

Separate groups of pigeons learned the same three sets of sample-compa rison relations across two phases of conditional discrimination traini ng. For one group, that training consisted of multiple-sample, single- comparison (A-X, B-X) matching-to-sample followed by a second matching task in which two of the original samples were matched to new compari sons (A-Y). For the other group, initial training consisted of single- sample, multiple-comparison (A-X, A-Y) matching-to-sample followed by a second task in which two of the original comparisons were matched to new samples (B-X). Both groups were then tested on the same set of de rived sample-comparison relations (B-Y). Transfer to these derived rel ations was evident following the multiple-sample, single-comparison tr aining sequence but not following the single-sample, multiple-comparis on sequence. Apparently, the emergence of new conditional relations in pigeons depends upon the order in which the component conditional dis criminations are learned-a result predictable from Huh's (1939) analys is of secondary stimulus generalization.