From semantic to syntactic repertoires: the significance of three-term contingencies

ABSTRACT

Three-term contingencies relate discriminative stimuli, responses, and reinforcers. Their fundamental importance is recognized widely by behavioral scientists. Sidman (1994) expresses the view that “the three-term contingency is the basic analytic unit of cognition,” a view based on experimental analyses of the contingencies that establish the prerequisites for complex relational performances that emerge without direct training. This now extensive area of research has examined primarily the development of semantic repertoires (e.g., the substitutability, more formally equivalence, of stimuli). The focus here is to relate research on sequence production and discrimination (i.e., syntactic repertoires) to Sidman’s view of the importance of three-term behavioral units generated by reinforcement contingencies. Consideration of syntactic repertoires will highlight and extend the range of phenomena to which that view may apply.

KEYWORDS:

• Three-term contingencies
• behavioral units
• analytic unit of cognition
• semantic and syntactic repertoires
• relational performances

Acknowledgements

This article is based on a presentation at the Third Sarasota Symposium on Behavior Analysis. Thanks to Iver Iversen and Per Holth for attending to the arrangements that made it possible to honor Murray Sidman for his many contributions, personal as well as professional.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The same kind of analysis can be applied to relations other than equivalence that may be produced using conditional discrimination procedures such as matching to sample (e.g., opposite, different, Steele & Hayes, 1991), but space does not permit detailed discussion.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the US National Institutes of Health [grant number MH90272], [grant number DC 10365].