ABSTRACT
This chapter illustrates the development of a generative behavior repertoire in a child with mental retardation. It discusses environment-behavior interactions that result in the emergence of novel performances without direct training. The work pursues some implications of research on stimulus classes and stimulus sequences. Particularly important are the contingencies that produce stimulus classes, stimulus sequences, and relations among the stimuli in these classes and sequences. M. Sidman studied the emergence of untrained rudimentary reading performances in a youth with mental retardation, providing the initial data for what is often called the stimulus-equivalence paradigm. Research suggests that stimulus equivalences play a part in the acquisition of syntactic relations as well as semantic relations. Constructing the printed number words to dictated number names established each dictated and printed name as equivalent members of the same class and enabled matching with comparison stimuli.
