Exploring an alternative for running experiments during social distancing: A pilot study of stimulus equivalence

Abstract

Web-based platforms were useful tools for running psychology experiments remotely during the pandemic. They enabled the collection of behavioral data while keeping participants and researchers safe from infection threats imposed by the coronavirus crisis. This study focused on the generality of equivalence outcomes typically observed in basic research laboratories. Participants accessed the experimental task remotely and were trained in a matching-to-sample (MTS) task. The procedure was designed to establish conditional discriminations between (A) pictures of women expressing happiness and angriness (A1 and A2), and (B, C) several abstract shapes (B1, B2, C1, and C2). Upon completion of one-to-many training, participants were tested on MTS-probe trials designed to assess the non-trained equivalence relations BC (B1C1 and B2C2) and CB (C1B1 and C2B2). Finally, two semantic judgment blocks of trials assessed equivalence-priming effects for the B and C stimulus-stimulus relations and priming effects for semantically related words. Results showed the expected patterns based on equivalence class formation, that is, emergent BC and CB relations following training of AB and AC conditional discriminations, and semantic priming effects were observed in the semantic judgment trials. In general, these results suggest that studies on stimulus equivalence may be conducted by means of web-based platforms.