Abstract
Participants were 2 typically developing children, aged 9 and 10 years, and 1 child, aged 4 years, with a reported severe speech delay. Five specific mand functions were trained such that participants learned to mand for the delivery or removal of tokens to the value of −2, −1, 0, +1, and +2, by presenting an arbitrary stimulus (A1, A2, A3, A4, and A5, respectively). The A stimuli were then incorporated into a series of interrelated conditional discriminations (A1–B1, B1–C1, A2–B2, B2–C2, A3–B3, B3–C3, A4–B4, B4–C4, A5–B5, B5–C5). Subsequent tests determined if participants derived 5 specific mands, presenting C1, C2, C3, C4, and C5 as mands for −2, −1, 0, +1 and +2 tokens. Three participants demonstrated derived manding, and derived manding altered in accordance with newly trained relations across two reversal procedures.
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The current study was partially funded by the Research and Graduate Studies Department at NUI Maynooth. The Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences also provided partial funding for the research.
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Murphy, C., Barnes-Holmes, D. Establishing Derived Manding for Specific Amounts with Three Children: An Attempt at Synthesizing Skinner’s Verbal Behavior with Relational Frame Theory. Psychol Rec 59, 75–91 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395650
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03395650