Auditory-visual and visual-visual equivalence relations in children

Previous research has suggested that persons with mental retardation evidence equivalence more readily after being trained on auditory-visual than on visual-visual match-to-sample tasks. The present study sought to determine if this discrepancy is also apparent in normally capable preschoolers and whether the derived class-consistent test performances could have resulted from applying the same verbal label to all stimuli of a class or from intraverbal naming. Sixteen 5-year-old children received training on auditory-visual and visual-visual match-to-sample tasks. Then they were tested for equivalence, requested to name each stimulus, and given the opportunity to sort the stimuli according to equivalence-class membership. Unsolicited naming responses were recorded during all arbitrary matching tasks. All 16 children passed the auditory-visual equivalence test, 12 of whom also passed the sorting test. Only 9 of these children passed the visual-visual equivalence test, 5 of whom also passed the sorting test. The performances during the equivalence and sorting tests appeared not to be related to the names given during the presentation or after the presentation of the matching tasks