ASSOCIATIVE CONCEPT LEARNING, STIMULUS EQUIVALENCE, AND RELATIONAL FRAME THEORY: WORKING OUT THE SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES BETWEEN HUMAN AND NONHUMAN BEHAVIOR

摘要

The question of what makes humans unique has attracted considerable attention within the behavioral sciences. Throughout much of the past century it was assumed that those learning principles identified in nonhumans could stretch to, and account for, much of complex human behavior (see Dymond, Roche, & Barnes-Holmes, 2003; Hayes, 1987; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes&Roche, 2001). This "continuity assumption" served as an intellectual rudder guiding early work in the field, with researchers focusing pragmatically on nonhumans in order to identify general learning principles that could predict and influence the actions of our own species. In many respects, this analytic strategy was a successful one, yielding concepts that appear to apply equally to humans and nonhumans alike (e.g., reinforcement, punishment, generalization, discrimination, extinction, recovery and habituation). The continuity assumption seemed to hold true.