Lorismario Ernesto Simonassi

Efeito do treino de composição (cópia) na aprendizagem do conceito de proporção

This experiment investigated the effect of training conditional relations between pictorial and numerical fractional stimuli, with and without composition training, upon the learning of the proportion concept. It was evaluated the formation of equivalence classes, expansion of classes formed, generalization to new situations, and pencil and paper problem solving with fractional stimuli. The participants were 20 students of the sixth grade of Elementary School. The QEG and TCQEC groups were exposed to training and testing of conditional relations, but the last group was exposed, additionally, to a fractional composition training before the conditional relations training; two control groups were exposed only to the initial and final tests. The results indicated the formation of equivalence classes, but did not show effects of the composition training.

Procedimento alternativo para produção de correspondência

The relations between verbal and non-verbal operant classes have been studied by an area called “say-do; do-say correspondence”. The present study verified (1) if successive manipulations of reinforcers and punishments contingent to dependent and independent operants (say/do classes), influence each other; (2) the effects of the application of reinforcers and punishment on independent operant classes and (3) if when reinforcing and punishing dependent operant classes occurs correspondence between these operant classes. In experiment I eight female university students participated, being exposed to five experimental phases. The results of experiment I showed that contingencies of reinforcement were effective to promote correspondence between independent operant classes for six of the eight participants. The two other participants did not show correspondence in all phases. In experiment II nine female university students participated, being exposed to three experimental phases. The results showed that the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment du-ring phase 2 were effective in promoting correspondence between dependent operant classes. In this experiment two variables were manipulated at the same time. To solve this problem experiment III was designed. In experiment III, eight university students participated, being exposed to three experimental phases. The results showed that the contingencies of reinforcement and punishment during phase 2 were effective in promoting correspondence between dependent operant classes. Experiment III was designed to identify which variable controlled participants’ behavior. The results showed that the controlling variable was the relation of functional dependence. Together, these experiments made possible to verify that when dependency contingencies between operant classes are organized, the probability of correspondence between say and do occurs.