Arbitrarily applicable spatial relational responding.

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Behavioral Science

Background:

• Spatial reasoning involves inferring new spatial relationships from learned ones.
• This can be framed as arbitrarily applicable spatial relational responding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and validate the first laboratory procedure for establishing arbitrarily applicable spatial relational responding in adult humans.
• To provide a functional analytic model for spatial reasoning.

Main Methods:

• Experiment 1: Trained participants on nonarbitrary spatial relations (left of, right of, above, below) using contextual cues, then trained arbitrary spatial relations with abstract shapes.
• Experiment 2: Employed a variant reversal design to test the predictability of learned spatial relations.
• Utilized remedial training with nonarbitrary relational guidance when initial tests failed.

Main Results:

• Participants demonstrated emergent untrained spatial relations after training on a subset of arbitrary relations.
• Spatial relational responding was consistent with trained and tested relations.
• Reversal designs in Experiment 2 produced predictable, reversed spatial relational responses.

Conclusions:

• The study presents the first empirical demonstration of arbitrarily applicable spatial relational responding.
• The developed procedures offer a foundational functional analytic model for spatial reasoning.