Effects of Instructions on Conditional Discriminations

The role of instructions on conditional discriminations and stimulus equivalence has often been discussed, but not extensively empirically explored. In most cases, participants are given as little information as possible to limit the effects of the instructions on conditional discrimination. Hence, in the current experiment the effects of instructions are investigated. The experiment consists of three conditions, where the first condition involves presentation of general instructions (e.g., “your task is to find out which stimuli that belongs together”), and the second condition includes presentation of specific instructions (e.g., “this stimulus is a fish and belongs together with the car which is this stimulus”). In addition there is a control group which does not employ general or specific instructions. The dependent measures are the number of training trials and equivalence responding.