Ian Tyndall

The Function Acquisition Speed Test (FAST): A Behavior Analytic Implicit Test for Assessing Stimulus Relations.

Subjects completed a baseline stimulus matching procedure designed to produce two symmetrical stimulus relations; A1–B1 and A2–B2. Using A1, B1, and two novel stimuli, subjects were then trained to produce a common key-press response for two stimuli and a second key-press response for two further stimuli across two blocks of response training. During one block, the reinforcement contingencies were consistent with baseline relations (i.e., A1 and B1 shared a response function), whereas during the other block they were not. Thirteen of 18 subjects who completed the procedure showed a response class acquisition rate differential across the two test blocks in the predicted direction. It is suggested that this procedure may serve as a behavior analytic alternative to popular implicit tests. It provides a nonrelative measure of stimulus association strength and may display superior procedural implicitness over other tests.

The Interfering Effect of Emotional Stimulus Functions on Stimulus Equivalence Class Formation: Implications for the Understanding and Treatment of Anxiety

The present experiment examined the effects of respondently conditioned emotional functions on the formation of stimulus equivalence relations. Fifty-seven participants were exposed to a stimulus-pairing procedure that paired six nonsense syllables with aversive images, and a further six stimuli with neutral images. A second phase established different operant response functions for one aversive CS and one neutral CS. In Phase 3, 45 of the 57 participants demonstrated a transfer of the established operant response to stimuli sharing respondent functions, thereby demonstrating the formation of two functional classes. Using a between-subjects design, participants were then exposed to a conditional discrimination training and testing protocol designed to establish two three-member stimulus equivalence relations using either six aversive or six emotionally neutral CSs as stimuli. Participants required significantly more testing trials to form stimulus equivalence relations when all stimuli had emotionally aversive functions compared to neutral functions. Implications of this study for the treatment of clinical anxiety are considered.

Using action dynamics to assess competing stimulus control during stimulus equivalence testing

Previous studies have identified potential sources of competing stimulus control in tests for stimulus equivalence. The present experiment employed the Nintendo Wii remote (Wiimote®) to investigate whether such competition would affect suboperant action dynamics (e.g., topographies of equivalence responses). Following one-to-many training on conditional discriminations sufficient to establish three 3-member equivalence classes, participants were presented with a test for equivalence responding that included five different trial types. These included “traditional” equivalence trials, on which the incorrect stimulus had previously been presented as a correct comparison stimulus during training, trials on which a novel unrelated word was provided as the incorrect comparison, and trials on which the incorrect stimulus varied in orthographical and phonological similarity to the sample stimulus. The presence of phonological and orthographic distractor stimuli significantly reduced the probability of equivalence-consistent responding, relative to neutral distractors, but this effect was almost exclusively seen in participants who failed to demonstrate equivalence on traditional equivalence trials. Analyses of correct response trajectories suggested that the prior history of reinforcement for choosing the incorrect stimulus on the traditional equivalence trial gave rise to greater competition than did phonological or orthographic similarity between the sample and incorrect comparisons.

The relationship between differential stimulus relatedness and implicit measure effect sizes

Implicit measures have been hypothesized to allow researchers to ascertain the existence and strength of relations between stimuli, often in the context of research on attitudes. However, little controlled behavioral research has focused on whether stimulus relations, and the degree of relatedness within such relations, are indexed by implicit measures. The current study examined this issue using a behavior-analytic implicit-style stimulus relation indexing procedure known as the Function Acquisition Speed Test (FAST). Using a matching-to-sample (MTS) procedure to train stimulus equivalence relations between nonsense syllables, the number of iterations of the procedure was varied across groups of participants, hence controlling stimulus relatedness in the resulting equivalence relations. Following final exposure to the MTS procedure, participants completed a FAST. Another group of participants was exposed to a FAST procedure with word pairs of known relatedness. Results showed that increasing relatedness resulted in a linear increase in FAST effect size. These results provide the first direct empirical support for a key process-level assumption of the implicit literature, and offer a behavior-analytic paradigm within which to understand these effects. These results also suggest that the FAST may be a viable procedure for the quantification of emergent stimulus relations in stimulus equivalence training.

Piloting a brief relational operant training program: analyses of response latencies and intelligence test performance

ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that training relational operant responding using the SMART (Strengthening Mental Abilities with Relational Training) program over several months can result in improved performance on cognitive intelligence tests. This study aimed to investigate whether engaging in a 3-week relational training program would improve (i) scores and (ii) reaction times on a standardised intelligence test, and (iii) to pilot a new multiple exemplar training procedure targeting complex analogical operant responding (SMARTA; SMART for Analogy). We administered the Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (KBIT-2) to eight adults across four time points. Control: Time 1–4: No intervention. Experimental: Time 1–2: No intervention. Time 2–3: SMART relational operant training. Time 3–4: SMARTA analogical relational operant training. Experimental participants demonstrated greater improvements in terms of both (i) response latencies and (ii) response fluencies on the Verbal Knowledge subscale of the KBIT-2.

Anticipatory versus Reactive Spatial Attentional Bias to Threat

Dot-probe or visual probe tasks (VPTs) are used extensively to measure attentional biases. A novel variant termed the cued VPT (cVPT) was developed to focus on the anticipatory component of attentional bias. This study aimed to establish an anticipatory attentional bias to threat using the cVPT and compare its split-half reliability with a typical dot-probe task. A total of 120 students performed the cVPT task and dot-probe tasks. Essentially, the cVPT uses cues that predict the location of pictorial threatening stimuli, but on trials on which probe stimuli are presented the pictures do not appear. Hence, actual presentation of emotional stimuli did not affect responses. The reliability of the cVPT was higher at most cue-stimulus intervals and was .56 overall. A clear anticipatory attentional bias was found. In conclusion, the cVPT may be of methodological and theoretical interest. Using visually neutral predictive cues may remove sources of noise that negatively impact reliability. Predictive cues are able to bias response selection, suggesting a role of predicted outcomes in automatic processes.