title: Transitive and anti-transitive emergent relations in pigeons: support for a theory of stimulus-class formation.
abstract: Stimulus class formation is inferred when conditional discrimination training yields new (emergent) conditional relations between the training stimuli. The present experiments demonstrated two such relations in pigeons after successive matching-to-sample training. Experiment 1 showed that transitivity (AC matching) emerged after training on AB and BC arbitrary matching plus BB identity matching: pigeons responded relatively more to the comparisons on AC test trials in which both the A samples and C comparisons were elements of reinforced arbitrary baseline relations involving the same nominal B stimulus. Experiment 2 showed the opposite effect ("anti-transitivity") after training on the same arbitrary relations but with BB oddity instead: pigeons responded relatively more to the comparisons on AC test trials in which the A sample was an element of a reinforced baseline relation and the C comparison was an element of a non-reinforced baseline relation, or vice versa. Experiment 2 also showed that AB and BC training alone generally does not yield an emergent effect. These findings extend the range of emergent phenomena observed in non-human animals and are consistent with predictions from Urcuioli's (2008) theory of pigeons' stimulus class formation. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled: Tribute to Tom Zentall.
authors: Purdue University, United States. Electronic address: urcuioli@purdue.edu.
authors: Peter J
authors: PJ
authors: Urcuioli
authors: Purdue University, United States.
authors: Melissa J
authors: MJ
authors: Swisher
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001522:Behavior, Animal; D003118:Color Perception; D010856:Columbidae; D003216:Conditioning, Operant; D004193:Discrimination Learning; D010364:Pattern Recognition, Visual; D011582:Psychological Theory
keywords: Anti-transitivity; Emergent relations; Pigeons; Stimulus classes; Successive matching; Transitivity