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Naming, stimulus classes and
categorisation. Fay D. A. Harris, Valerie R. L. Randle, Pauline J. Horne and C. Fergus Lowe University of Wales, Wales The issue of how organisms come to respond to arbitrary stimuli as a category or class (formerly known as "stimulus equivalence") has attracted the attention of many behaviour analysts in recent years. Recently, Horne and Lowe (1996) have argued that the concept of "stimulus equivalence" is fundamentally flawed and impedes empirical research on the more fundamental phenomenon of interest which is categorisation. In addition, Horne and Lowe proposed that categorisation of arbitrary stimuli may only be achieved by verbal organisms, who name the stimuli (either with a common name or intraverbally) in ways that establish a stimulus class. We present here results from a series of studies designed to put this account to the test. The participants were children aged 2-4 years old. In one condition (the Naming Condition) children were trained to produced a common name (e.g. "zag") for each of three or more arbitrary stimuli and a second name (e.g. "vek") for a second set. All the children who learned to name passed the tests of categorisation (i.e., given any one stimulus as sample the remaining stimuli in that category were selected). Though naming can give rise to categorisation is it necessary? This was tested in a second series of studies in which children were not taught common naming but common listener behaviour (e.g. selection of the vek (zag) stimulus when asked "Where is the vek ("zag)". Children who only learned listener behaviour, and did not produce the common names, did not pass the categorisation tests. When subsequently trained to produce the common names most children went on to pass the categorisation tests. These results support the view that naming is necessary for categorisation of arbitrary stimuli. Keywords: naming, stimulus equivalence, categorisation, stimulus classes, verbal behaviour |
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