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Restricted Stimulus Control in Stimulus Control Shaping with a Capuchin Monkey.

Ana Leda F Brino¹, Olavo F Galvão¹, Romariz S Barros¹

¹Universidade Federal do Pará, Brazil.

Psychology & Neuroscience

|May 13, 2014

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Teaching arbitrary matching to nonhumans is challenging. This study found that gradual stimulus element subtraction can lead to failure by maintaining control of residual elements, not the target arbitrary relations.

Keywords:

Cebus cf. apella matching to sample restricted stimulus control stimulus control shaping

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Area of Science:

Behavioral Psychology
Animal Cognition

Background:

Teaching arbitrary matching to sample (AMTS) to nonhumans is complex.
Stimulus control can develop in unintended ways during AMTS training, even with shaping procedures.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the causes of failure in stimulus control shaping programs for AMTS.
To identify why a capuchin monkey failed to learn target arbitrary matching relations.

Main Methods:

A capuchin monkey was trained using a baseline of identity matching.
Compound comparison stimuli were gradually reduced by subtracting elements identical to the sample.
Probe tests assessed performance on trials with and without residual elements.

Main Results:

The monkey performed accurately during shaping but poorly on probe trials lacking residual elements.
Performance on probe trials was higher when residual elements were present, indicating continued stimulus control by these elements.
The target arbitrary matching relations were not learned until further programming steps were implemented.

Conclusions:

Gradual transformation of identity matching to AMTS can fail by inadvertently shaping restricted stimulus control.
Residual stimulus elements can maintain control, hindering the acquisition of target arbitrary matching relations.
Further programming steps can overcome restricted stimulus control and achieve successful transfer.