Relations among equivalence, naming, and conflicting baseline control

Three studies were conducted with different groups of 6 students each to ex plore the effects of training class-inconsistent relations and naming on de monstrations of emergent arbitrary stimulus relations. In all studies, two three-member equivalence classes of Creek symbols (A1B1C1 and A2B2C2) emerg ed as a result of training in conditional discriminations. Two new symbols were introduced (X and Y), and additional conditional discriminations were trained, whereby X was designated as the positive discriminative stimulus ( Sf) and Y was designated as the negative discriminative stimulus (S-) for A l and B2. Conversely, Y was designated as the Sf and X as the S- for B1 and A2. This introduced conflicting sources of control within and between clas ses. In Study 1, subjects were not provided with names fur the stimuli. In Study 2, the experimenter provided common names for the stimuli within each class. In Study 3, the subjects were required to use the common names duri ng conditional discrimination training and test-trial blocks. In all experi ments, equivalence responding with respect to the original classes was disr upted for some subjects subsequent to learning the new relations. Furthermo re, in Studies 2 and 3, there were frequent examples of non-correspondence between observed (listener or speaker) naming patterns and derived relation s. These results support the view that demonstrations of equivalence are su bject to control from a variety of sources rather than being fundamentally dependent on naming.