A Derived Transfer of Simple Discrimination and Self-Reported Arousal Functions in Spider Fearful and Non-Spider-Fearful Participants

摘要

Two experiments investigated the derived transfer of functions through equivalence relations established using a stimulus pairing observation procedure. In Experiment 1, participants were trained on a simple discrimination (A1+/A2−) and then a stimulus pairing observation procedure was used to establish 4 stimulus pairings (A1–B1, A2–B2, B1–C1, B2–C2). Subsequently, a transfer of the simple discrimination functions through equivalence relations was observed (e.g., C1+/C2−). These procedures were modified in Experiment 2, which demonstrated that spider-fearful and non-spider-fearful participants show differing levels of a transfer of self-reported arousal functions for stimuli used in equivalence relations with video-based material depicting scenes with spiders. The results demonstrate that the stimulus pairing observation procedure provides a viable alternative to matching-to-sample, and also offer tentative support for a derived-relations model of the acquisition of anxiety responses in at least one sub-clinical population.