Abstract
The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of conditional discrimination training on the emergence of music theory and piano skills. In Experiment 1, two undergraduate students learned to identify three musical chord symbols, their respective notations and pictures of the chords. Participants were also taught to play the piano in the presence of a picture of the piano chord. In Experiment 2, six undergraduate students learned to identify the same musical chords; however, the picture of the piano was removed from the training set. Participants also learned to play chords on the piano following the dictated name of the chord and to play the chords to a song on the keyboard. Results of both experiments are consistent with past research in stimulus equivalence and suggest that conditional discrimination training is effective in teaching adults to read musical notation and play chords on the keyboard.