Speed and accuracy in fluency and equivalence

Abstract

Speed and accuracy are the two main themes of the current thesis. Article 1 presents the conceptual, historical and empirical basis of behavioral fluency, how speed and accuracy are involved in fluency-based training and treatment, and the evidence for the superiority of fluency training. The possible implications of basic research on stimulus equivalence will be related to behavioral fluency, while considering a possible complementarity between the fields. Article 2 is an empirical study on the comparison of speed and accuracy conditions in the establishment of stimulus equivalence and adduction and on the retention of the respective performances. There is some indication that a speed condition is most effective for the stability of equivalence relations, while equal probabilities of adduction result from either speed or accuracy conditions. The results are related to recent equivalence studies where speed and accuracy are involved