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.