Stimulus equivalence and rule following.

The present study examined the occurrence of a novel behavior pattern with respect to a novel configuration of stimuli enabled by the participation of those stimuli in equivalence classes. In Experiment 1, functional substitutabilities were established via equivalence between two independent sets of musical stimuli. Aspects of stimuli from the two sets were then compounded to produce novel stimulus configurations. Behavioral components enabled by each separate class combined to produce novel musical performances and accurate descriptions of them. In Experiment 2, the impact of experimenter-provided names for equivalence classes on the musical performances was investigated in naive subjects by establishing similar classes without experimenter-provided names. The results indicated few differences in the playing performances under these conditions. These experiments demonstrated a possible method for the analysis of rule following.