A TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS AND A CONDITIONAL TRANSFER OF FUNCTIONS THROUGH EQUIVALENCE-RELATIONS IN 3-YEAR-OLD TO 6-YEAR-OLD CHILDREN

Six children, aged between 3 years and 6 years were trained to form tw o, three member equivalence relations (A1-B1-C1 and A2-B2-C2). Clappin g was then reinforced in the presence of B1, and waving was reinforced in the presence of B2. During testing, all children showed the predic ted transfer of discriminative functions through equivalence to the C stimuli (i.e., C1 evoked clapping and C2 evoked waving). Three control subjects of similar ages, who were trained in the conditional discrim inations and tested for equivalence using different arbitrary stimuli for C1 and C2, failed to show this transfer of functions. All nine chi ldren (six experimental and three control) were also exposed to condit ional discriminative function training. That is, clapping was reinforc ed when B1 was presented in the presence of the spoken word ''Yellow,' ' and waving was reinforced when B1 was presented in the presence of t he spoken word ''Blue.'' In contrast, waving was reinforced when B2 wa s presented in the presence of the spoken word ''Yellow,'' and clappin g was reinforced when B2 was presented in the presence of the spoken w ord ''Blue.'' During testing, the contextual stimuli were presented in visual form only. Two four-year-old children and one six-year-old chi ld (experimental subjects) showed the predicted conditional transfer o f control through equivalence relations to the C stimuli (YELLOW/C1--> clapping, Blue/C1-->waving, YELLOW/C2-->waving, and BLUE/C2-->clapping ), whereas the four- and six-year-old control subjects did not. The th ree-year-old subjects (both control and experimental) refused to compl ete the study.