Using equivalence‐based instruction to teach piano skills to college students

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to evaluate the effects of equivalence-based instruction (EBI) on the emergence of basic music reading and piano playing skills. Six female college students learned to identify three musical chord notations given their respective dictated names. Participants also learned to play chords on the piano following the dictated name of the chord, and to play the chords to a song on a keyboard. Results are consistent with past research, in that stimuli became substitutable for each other and acquired a common behavioral function. Data suggest that EBI was an effective and efficient procedure to teach adults to read musical notation, as well as play chords and a song on a piano keyboard.

Using equivalence‐based instruction to teach the visual analysis of graphs

“…We used a single‐session pretest‐posttest design, embedded in a two‐tier nonconcurrent multiple baseline across participants design (Carr, ; Christ, Cooper, Heron, & Heward, ; Watson & Workman, ) to examine experimental control and assess the effects of conditional discrimination training in the form of MTS on the formation of five three‐member classes. We exposed Participants 2 and 4 to two pretests, conducted in two successive conditions in a single session, to control for testing effects (Griffith, Ramos, Hill, & Miguel, ). Finally, we conducted maintenance and generalization probes for all participants.…”

Behavior Science Emerges

“…But science does not stagnate. The Equivalence Relations, Relational Frames, Acceptance and Commitment literatures have advanced understanding and application far beyond 1957 to grapple with issues from prejudice to psychotherapy and beyond (Arntzen, Granmo, & Fields, 2017;Avellaneda et al, 2016;Ayres-Pereira, Canovas, Varella, & de Souza, 2018;Beurms, Traets, De Houwer, & Beckers, 2017;Bordieri, Kellum, Wilson, & Whiteman, 2016;Carp & Petursdottir, 2015;Dixon, Enoch, & Belisle, 2017;Eilifsen & Arntzen, 2017;Fox & Kyonka, 2017;Griffith, Ramos, Hill, & Miguel, 2018;Guinther, 2017;Jennings & Miguel, 2017;López-López & Luciano, 2017;Ma, Miguel, & Jennings, 2016;Maraccini, Houmanfar, & Szarko, 2016;May, Stewart, Baez, Freegard, & Dymond, 2017;Mensah & Arntzen, 2017;Mizael, de Almeida, Silveira, & de Rose, 2016;Plazas & Villamil, 2018;Rippy & Doughty, 2017;Silveira et al, 2016). Regardless of whether this work is labeled as Equivalence Relations, Relational Frames, or Acceptance and Commitment, the similarities outnumber the differences and we hope this special section paves the way for consilience between these diverse and vital research programs.…”

Using equivalence‐based instruction to teach piano skills to children

“…The findings of Griffith et al ( may have been limited by two factors. First, there was no pretest for the sequenced generalization tasks (playing a song), which limited the demonstration of experimental control.…”

“…Although there are numerous theories on how to teach music (Huang, ), the field of music education remains relatively unexplored by behavior analysts, with just a few empirical studies to date (e.g., Arntzen, Halstadtro, Bjerke, & Halstadtro, ; Griffith, Ramos, Hill, & Miguel, ; Hayes, Thompson, & Hayes, ; Perez & de Rose, ; Reis, Perez, & de Rose, ). The aforementioned studies used equivalence‐based instruction (EBI) to establish equivalence relations between auditory‐musical stimuli and musical notation.…”

“…In a recent study by Griffith et al (), researchers used an auditory–visual MTS procedure to train two relations between a dictated chord (the vocal instruction stating one of three chords [A]: “C‐major,” “G‐major,” or “F‐major”) and two categories of visual stimuli (the textual representation of each chord [B], and the musical notation [C]) to six college students. Participants were also directly taught to play the piano with correct finger placement on the keys for each chord (AE).…”