Abstract
The purpose of the current study was to examine the effects of differential tact training in the emergence of analogical reasoning as measured by an equivalence-equivalence test. Six undergraduate students were initially trained to tact the images individually as “vek” and “zog”. Participants were then taught the relational tacts “same” and “different” for compound stimuli consisting of images from the same and different classes, respectively. Subsequently, participants were presented with tact and analogy tests consistent with symmetry (BA and CB) and transitivity (AC and CA). Lastly, participants were tested on the emergence of equivalence classes across individual stimuli. All six participants successfully completed the tact and analogy tests. Results showed that differential tact training of stimulus components was sufficient to establish two distinct separate classes. Moreover, after learning to tact stimulus compounds with a common tact, participants passed all derived relational tests. These findings support the importance of tact training in facilitating the formation of both equivalence and equivalence-equivalence classes.