Mimicking Meaningfulness: stimulus equivalence and meaning

Abstract

The current paper reflects on some of the basic issues in the concept of stimulus equivalence as proposed by Murray Sidman. The paired-associate paradigm was the predominant method being employed to demonstrate how organisms come to treat dissimilar events that had not been related before as if they were the same. Several papers by Murray Sidman after the demise of the pair-associates methodology brought a paradigm shift in stimulus equivalence research from the paired-associates realm to the study of the properties of reflexivity, symmetry, and transitivity through conditional discrimination training. Stimulus equivalence research has since been conducted with different organism (nonhumans and humans), adults, children, autistic children, amongst others, and with stimuli of different modalities (familiar pictures, abstract stimuli, tactile, etc.). A very important focus of this paper is to review papers on the use of meaningful or familiar stimuli in the equivalence research so far and finally suggest directions for future researchers on the use of meaningful stimuli in equivalence research