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The purpose of the current study was to extend the findings on the use of the go/no-go successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure to establish auditory equivalence classes. Eight college students learned to conditionally relate nonverbal auditory stimuli into three, 3-member classes. Following training, all participants met the emergence criterion for symmetry, and six out of eight participants met the emergence criterion for transitivity/equivalence. Furthermore, all participants responded with either an experimenter-defined or a unique tact, and five participants related these names intraverbally. Although these results replicate previous findings, albeit with stimuli that cannot be echoed, possible verbal mediation via tact and intraverbal behavior seems to have occurred.

Mass incarceration rates have become a financial burden on the country and in 2023, the United States was faced with one of the highest recidivism rates worldwide, with approximately 44% of individuals returning to prison within a year of their release. Although various programs are available to incarcerated individuals and for those considered at risk for offending, access to these programs varies by jurisdiction and the effectiveness in preventing offenses, reducing recidivism, and fostering rehabilitation is not entirely known. In response to recidivism and incarceration rates, there has been a plea for a change in the criminal justice system, with an emphasis on involving behavior analysts. However, the extent of the application of behavior‐analytic interventions within the criminal justice system in the research literature is unclear. Thus, the purpose of the current review was to examine the existing experimental literature to determine the state of this research topic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure with a go/no-go preparation to establish three 3-member classes of visual stimuli with 24 undergraduate college students. At the start of each trial, participants touched a sample stimulus after which a comparison immediately appeared in the same location on the screen. Then, depending on the relation between sample and comparison, participants were required to either touch the comparison (i.e., go) or to refrain from touching it (i.e., no-go). The comparison remained on the screen for 8 s independent of participants' responses. Following training of baseline relations (AB/BC), responses to untrained relations (i.e., BA/CB and AC/CA) were assessed. Overall, 22 out of 24 participants met emergence criterion on AC/CA tests, with reaction times to comparisons below 5 s indicating that S-MTS may be a viable alternative to traditional MTS to establish equivalence classes. Keywords Derived stimulus relations * Discrimination ? Equivalence * Go/No-Go * Matching-to-sample, Matching-to-sample (MTS) procedures are commonly used to teach conditional discriminations and test for emergent relations consistent with the properties of symmetry, transitivity, and equivalence (Green & Saunders, 1998; Sidman, 1994). [...]

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a go/no‐go successive matching‐to‐sample procedure (S‐MTS) to establish auditory–visual equivalence classes with college students. A sample and a comparison were presented, one at a time, in the same location. During training, after an auditory stimulus was presented, a green box appeared in the center of the screen for participants to touch to produce the comparison. Touching the visual comparison that was related to the auditory sample (e.g., A1B1) produced points, while touching or refraining from touching an unrelated comparison (e.g., A1B2) produced no consequences. Following AB/AC training, participants were tested on untrained relations (i.e., BA/CA and BC/CB), as well as tacting and sorting. During BA/CA relations tests, after touching the visual sample, the auditory stimulus was presented along with a white box for participants to respond. During BC/CB relations tests, after touching the visual sample, a visual comparison appeared. Across 2 experiments, all participants met emergence criterion for untrained relations and for sorting. Additionally, 14 out of 24 participants tacted all visual stimuli correctly. Results suggest the auditory–visual S‐MTS procedure is an effective alternative to simultaneous MTS for establishing conditional relations and auditory‐visual equivalence classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]