title: Relational learning in a context of transposition: a review.
abstract: In a typical transposition task, an animal is presented with a single pair of stimuli (for example, S3+ S4-, where plus and minus denote reward and nonreward and digits denote stimulus location on a sensory dimension such as size). Subsequently, an animal is presented with a testing pair that contains a previously reinforced or nonreinforced stimulus and a novel stimulus (for example, S2-S3 and S4-S5). Does the choice of a novel S2 instead of previously reinforced S3 in a testing pair S2-S3 indicate that the animal has learned a relation (i.e., "select smaller")? This review of empirical evidence and theoretical accounts shows that an organism's behavior in a transposition task is undoubtedly influenced by prior reinforcement history of the training stimuli (Spence, 1937). However, it is also affected by two other factors that are relational in nature-a similarity of two testing stimuli to each other and an overall similarity of the testing pair as a whole to the training pair as a whole. The influence of the two latter factors is especially evident in studies that use multiple pairs of training stimuli and a wide range of testing pairs comprising nonadjacent stimuli (Lazareva, Miner, Young, & Wasserman, 2008; Lazareva, Wasserman, & Young, 2005). In sum, the evidence suggests that both prior reinforcement history and relational information affect an animal's behavior in a typical transposition task.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Drake University, Des Moines, IA 50311, USA. olga.lazareva@drake.edu
authors.forename: Olga F
authors.initials: OF
authors.lastname: Lazareva
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001245:Association Learning; D010856:Columbidae; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D005793:Generalization, Psychological; D005794:Generalization, Response; D006801:Humans; D012054:Reinforcement, Psychology; D012201:Reward