The role of intraverbal naming on the emergence of novel intraverbals and equivalence classes

The purpose of the current studies was to evaluate the effects of teaching unidirectional intraverbal relations in a statement format on the emergence of symmetry and transitivity intraverbal relations and equivalence classes. In Experiment 1, eight undergraduates were exposed to tact training, listener testing, intraverbal training, and a review phase. Derived relations matching-to-sample (MTS) and intraverbal posttests were presented in alternating fashion. The two undergraduates in Experiment 2 also passed all the posttests despite the elimination of the review phase. For Experiment 3, all MTS posttests were administered before intraverbal posttests and vice versa for four undergraduates. Despite procedural variations, all fourteen participants met the emergence criteria for derived relations MTS and intraverbal posttests. Combined results suggest that intraverbal training may be sufficient for producing novel intraverbal and stimulus-stimulus classes. Moreover, all participants emitted vocalizations at some point during the last MTS vocal posttest, suggesting that intraverbal naming mediated responses.