Errors and response latencies as a function of nodal distance in 5-member equivalence classes

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the relationship between noda l distance, response accuracy, and response latency during testing for emer gent relations. In both experiments, undergraduate subjects first learned A -B, B-C, C-D, and D-E constituent relations of six 5-member equivalence cla sses. In Experiment 1., only selected tests of trained and of 0-, 1-, and 2 -node tests of emergent relations were carried out in order to avoid testin g of 0- or 1-node relations that might form constituents of the 2-node rela tions which were tested, in Experiment 2, all possible trained and derived relations were tested in random order. Although considerable individual var iability was observed in both response times and accuracy for the 14 subjec ts completing Experiment 1, latencies for correct responses generally incre ased and response accuracy decreased as a function of nodal distance. There was no nodal distance effect for latencies of incorrect responses. In Expe riment 2, these relationships between response times, response accuracy, an d nodal distance were observed for 3-node relations in 5 out of 6 subjects. Analysis of error response latencies for 2 subjects who made sufficient er rors revealed a nodal distance effect for 1 subject but not for the other. In both experiments, response times decreased as testing progressed, but re sponse accuracy increased during testing only in the second experiment.