Responder por exclusão envolvendo relações palavra-objeto e palavra-ação

Abstract

Responding by exclusion is defined, in conditional discriminations tasks, as the immediate selection of a new stimulus, among other known stimuli, when a new sample stimulus is presented. Responding by exclusion is usually investigated by using nameobject relations as a baseline. However, generalization data of this behavior pattern to other classes of words, such as verbs, are scarce. This study investigated exclusion responding and learning of word-object (nouns) and word-action (verbs) relations in children aged 24 to 29 months. The presentation order of conditions (Noun or Verb) was counterbalanced across participants. After one, four, seven and 10 exclusion trials learning probes were presented. Results showed that baseline training for the Verb condition required a higher number of trials compared to the Noun condition. On the first exclusion probe, participants consistently selected the new stimulus, although greater variability was observed for the Verb condition. Only one participant showed positive outcomes on the learning probes, for one of the relations of the Noun condition. The study replicated previous findings on exclusion responding using nouns and extended it to name-action (verb) relations and to children aged about two years. The data points to the existence of different levels of learning and the need for a clear specification of how to measure learning outcomes of exclusion responding.