ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on a study that investigated some conditions that might create extreme and durable overselectivity in high-functioning adults—university students. It investigates overselectivity through a procedure designed to emphasize specific attributes of stimulus complexes. The stimulus complexes were eight two-dimensional computer-generated drawings of human faces, each with a different, distinctive name to be learned by the participant. Stimulus overselectivity refers to partial stimulus control: the control of responses by one or a few components of the stimulus complex programmed as discriminative for reinforcement. The faces chosen for Sudden Construction were added to their hair pictures in one trial, and naming and feedback continued in pairs of cycles, one always in a different order from the other, as before. Perhaps faces are special because of the features or portions of the faces that are most likely to function as stimulus controls.
