Using Stimulus-Equivalence Technology to Teach Skills About Nutritional Content

Abstract

Twenty-two adult participants, assigned to three conditions, were trained nutrition knowledge (i.e., carbohydrate values) for different food items. In a stimulus sorting test, the participants were asked to sort stimuli (names of food items) into one of three different ranges of carbohydrate values ("less than 20", "20–40", "more than 40" gram per 100 gram). Conditional-discrimination training and testing followed the sorting test, and finally, a postclass formation sorting test of the stimuli used in the conditional-discrimination training. The conditional-discrimination training used tailored stimuli, that is, the food items that each of the participants categorized incorrectly in the sorting test. Participants exposed to Conditions 1 and 2 were trained on six conditional discriminations and tested for the formation of three 3-member classes. Conditions 2 and 3 had a “don’t know” option together with the three different ranges of carbohydrate values in the sorting for tailoring the stimuli. Participants exposed to Condition 3 trained were trained on 12 conditional discriminations and tested for the formation of three 5-member classes. The main findings showed that all but one of the participants responded correctly on at least one test for equivalence class formation and sorted the stimuli correctly in the postclass formation sorting test.

A review on equivalence‐based procedures to teach food‐portion estimation skills

“…Seven studies published between the years of 2010–2020 were included in the review. Three studies were published in The Psychological Record (Regan et al., 2018; Trucil et al., 2015; Vladescu et al., 2021), and one study in each of the following journals, Behavioral Interventions (Hausman et al., 2017), Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (Hausman et al., 2014) , Journal of Behavioral Health and Medicine (Nastally et al., 2010), and Perspectives on Behavior Science (Arntzen & Eilertsen, 2020).…”

“…Additional procedures to evaluate portion size acquisition included percentage of healthy choices (Nastally et al, 2010) and grouping on the sorting test to incorrect stimuli (Arntzen & Eilertsen, 2020) and correct stimuli (Nastally et al, 2010) that were grouped in the sorting test (see Table 2). Lastly, four studies reported an average of absolute value of percentage deviation (Hausman et al, 2014(Hausman et al, , 2017Regan et al, 2018;Trucil et al, 2015;Vladescu et al, 2021).…”

“…protocol, in which all baseline relations were trained before testing for any emergent relations (Arntzen & Eilertsen, 2020;Hausman et al, 2014Hausman et al, , 2017Nastally et al, 2010) and the remaining three studies three studies used a simple-to-complex protocol (STC; see Table 1). Training and testing blocks in the STC protocol are interspersed incrementally, testing for symmetry, transitivity, and equivalence in that order, as new training relations are added.…”

“…Studies have demonstrated that EBI has been used to teach a wide variety of academic concepts such as geography (Dixon et al., 2017; LeBlanc et al., 2003), mathematics (Lynch & Cuvo, 1995), geometry (Dixon et al., 2016), reading (Rosales et al., 2014), spelling (De Souza & Rehfeldt, 2013), second language skills (Melvin‐Brown et al., 2022) and numeracy (McLay et al., 2016). In addition, EBI has been used to teach children recycling and waste management skills (Bolanos et al., 2020), identification of emotions of others (Schmick et al., 2018), requesting skills (Still et al., 2015), food choice and preference (Santos & Rose, 2018), and portion size estimation (Arntzen & Eilertsen, 2020; Hausman et al., 2014; Trucil et al., 2015). Furthermore, EBI can be effectively integrated with additional behavior analytic procedures, such as behavioral skills training (BST) and differential reinforcement, as a packaged intervention to strengthen the acquisition of skills (Giannakakos et al., 2021).…”

Equivalence relations do exist before they are tested: Confirmatory evidence revealed by EEG measurements

“…Arntzen, 2012). Numerous laboratory studies have been successful in examining equivalence relations both in basic research (e.g., Albright et al, 2019; Dougher et al, 1994; Sidman et al, 1985; Tomanari et al, 2006) and in applied settings demanding powerful, effective procedures for teaching and rehabilitation (e.g., Arntzen & Eilertsen, 2020; de Rose et al, 1996; Fienup et al, 2010; Keintz et al, 2011; see Pilgrim, 2020 for a review).…”