On the role of concept formation

Abstract

Within behavior analysis the main focus has been on the functional variables affecting concept formation, which have been widely studied within stimulus equivalence. Cognitive psychology has on the other hand been more interested in describing the structure of concepts, and the functional relations have received little attention. Article 1 involved a comparison between cognitive psychology and behavior analysis on concept formation. Laurence and Margolis (1999) presented five different theories about concepts. These included the classical theory, the neoclassical theory, the theory-theory, conceptual atomism and the prototype theory. This article focused on comparing these five theories against behavior analysis and stimulus equivalence on the role of concept formation. Article 2 involved the investigation of whether children in the age of 5–6 years old would be able to form three 6-member equivalence classes by using all visual stimuli with an MTO training structure by training one relation between two trained stimulus sets, and testing for all of the relations in the end. The results from this experiment demonstrated that both participants responded according to stimulus equivalence in tests for Stimulus Set 1 and 2, but not in the tests for the three 6-member classes. However, one of the participants sorted the stimuli according to the defined classes, and showed an increase in correct responding with extended testing.