Differential effect relational descriptive verbal behavior in the acquisition and transfer of a second-order conditional discrimination in children

Abstract

A study was carried out with ten children of elementary school in which the effect of the available "relational" verbal repertoire was evaluated on the acquisition and transference in a second-order conditional discrimination task involving identity, similarity and difference-matching relations. Experimental subjects were distributed in a control and a experimental group according to a pre-evaluation of their verbal repertoires in a card-grouping task and in a situation which required the verbal recognition of matching-relations. The results of this study showed that "relational" subjects asigned to the experimental group had a higher performance than control subjects even from the pre-test session, and during training, intramodal and extramodal transference tests, and the post-test. This finding is examined in relation to a formulation of the individual interactive history as an indicator of "capacity" and its logical role in the analysis of human behavior