Procedimentos para determinação e identificação de relações de controle em tarefas de IDMTS em Cebus apella

Abstract

Obtaining Type S and Type R control relations in Identity MTS (IDMTS) tasks may make possible the development of an accurate observing repertoire towards all the stimuli (S+ and S-). In this work, a sequence of procedures was used to generate or identify possible stimulus control relations present in IDMTS training and tests. The purposes of the present work were: a) verify the viability of the use of the mask procedure (blank comparison procedure) to identify or determine stimulus control relations in IDMTS tasks with capuchin monkeys, and b) evaluate the efficacy of this procedure to test for stimulus control relations. Two male capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) with previous experimental history participated. An experimental chamber equipped with a PC and touch screen monitor was used for stimulus presentation and response recording. In Experiment I, the subjects were given two-choice IDMTS training, mask procedure training, and biasing procedure training with the purpose of generating Type S and/or Type R stimulus control relations. Then, tests for stimulus control relations with mask procedure and new stimulus procedure were carried out. In Experiment II, we trained four-choice IDMTS tasks and tested for stimulus control relations via mask procedure. The results from Experiments I and II suggest that mask procedure was not effective to produce Type S and Type R stimulus control simultaneously, as well as the biasing procedure was partly effective to generate the expected Type S stimulus control. Forthcoming research, including better preparation for the blank comparisons effectively function as masks, has to be carried out. Research on this topic may bring up procedural variables that occasionally may be implied in the difficulty to obtain, for example, equivalence class formation in non-human subjects.