EQUIVALENCE CLASS FORMATION IN ELDERLY WITH ADVANCED AGE

Abstract

The present study evaluated empirically the formation of equivalence classes with elderly participants using the structure of “comparison-as-node” (CaN) training and the training design of the baseline conditional relations and the probe for emergent relations called “simple to complex”. Three participants aged between 76 and 83 years old were exposed to a matching to sample procedure to learn new conditional discriminations between arbitrary stimuli and then such relations were tested to check for the formation of equivalence classes. The results demonstrated that the participants learned the conditional relations, requiring on average between 4.83 and 8.37 repetitions of the baseline training blocks. All participants reached a score of more than 80% in the equivalence test. Thus it was possible to observe the emergence of equivalence classes with elderly participants using the structure of CaN training and the training design “simple to complex”. Key words: stimulus equivalence, matching to sample, equivalence class formation, elderly.