摘要：The main purpose of the present study was to determinewhether exemplar training in symmetry relations would readilyfacilitate the transformation of function in accordance withsymmetry, when subjects were not provided with explicit nametraining. The study also examined whether pretraining that wasformally similar to the symmetry test, but did not reinforcesymmetry relations, would have the same facilitative effect asexemplar training. Sixteen children, aged between 4 and 5 years,were employed across three experiments (i.e., 4 children each inExperiments 1 and 2, and 8 children in Experiment 3). InExperiment 1, subjects were trained in an action-object conditionaldiscrimination using familiar actions and objects (e.g., when theexperimenter waved, choosing a toy car was reinforced, and whenthe experimenter clapped, choosing a doll was reinforced).Subjects were then exposed to a test for derived object-actionsymmetry relations (e.g., experimenter presents toy car-*childwaves and experimenter presents doll-*child claps). Acrosssubsequent sessions, a multiple-baseline design was used tointroduce exemplar training (i.e., explicit symmetry training) forthose subjects who failed the symmetry test. Experiment 2replicated Experiment 1, except that the trained and testedrelations were reversed (i.e., train object-action, test action-objectrelations). Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 1, except thatsubjects were exposed to object-action pretraining. AcrossExperiments 1 and 2, none of the 8 subjects show derived objectaction(Experiment 1) or action-object (Experiment 2) symmetryuntil they received explicit symmetry training. Pretraining objectactionresponding in Experiment 3 appeared to facilitatesymmetry, but only for 4 of the 8 subjects. For the 4 subjects whofailed, symmetry emerged following exposure to exemplar training.Overall, the data are consistent with Relational Frame Theory.
