Effects of an Online Stimulus Equivalence Teaching Procedure on Research Design Open-Ended Questions Performance of International Undergraduate Students

The purpose of the present study was to assess if training in matching-to-sample (MTS) tasks would yield not only new MTS performance but also written topography-based responses involving research design names, definitions, notations, and examples in four international undergraduates. Thirty-six experimental stimuli-composed of nine research design names and their corresponding definitions, notations, and examples-were presented in a MTS format during teaching and emergent conditional relations testing sessions. The six topography-based response probes were composed of nine open-ended questions each. Participants learned all conditional relations, showed emergence of symmetric and transitive relations, and of topography-based responses. The present study provides some steps towards the use of stimulus equivalence for international delivery of content.