Related Publications

Dickins D. W. (2005). On aims and methods in the neuroimaging of derived relations. Journal of the experimental analysis of behavior, 84(3), 453–483. doi:10.1901/jeab.2005.92-04
[Abstract]Ingenious and seemingly powerful technologies have been developed recently that enable the visualization in some detail of events in the brain concomitant upon the ongoing behavioral performance of a human participant. Measurement of such brain events offers at the very least a new set of dependent variables in relation to which the independent variables familiarly manipulated in the operant laboratory may be explored. Two related paradigms in which a start has been made in such research concern the derivation of novel or emergent relations from a baseline set of trained relations, and include the phenomenon of transitive inference (TI), observed in studies of stimulus equivalence (SE) and serial learning (SL) or seriation. This paper reviews some published and forthcoming neuroimaging studies of these and related phenomena, and considers how this line of research both demands and represents a welcome synthesis between types of question and levels of explanation in behavioral science that often have been seen as antithetical.
[Citing Place (1995/6)]  

Dickins, D., Singh, K., Roberts, N., Burns, P., Downes, J., Jimmieson, P., & Bentall, R. (2001). An fMRI study of stimulus equivalence. Neuroreport, 12(2), 405-411. www.academia.edu/download/43697924/An_fMRI_study_of_stimulus_equivalence20160313-1683-54en2k.pdf
[Abstract]In order to study brain activation during the formation of equivalence relations, 12 subjects (mean age 27.6 yrs) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) during matching-to-sample (MTS) tests of (1) previously trained arbitrary relationships between iconic stimuli and the untrained, emergent relations of (2) symmetry, (3) transitivity, and (4) symmetry with transitivity, plus a test of verbal fluency (VF). Brain activation was similar in all MTS tasks and in the VF task. In particular, both types of task activated dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and posterior parietal cortex bilaterally. However VF, but not the MTS tasks, activated Broca's area. In three of the four MTS tasks, behavioural accuracy was significantly correlated with left lateralisation of DLPFC activity. Brain activation patterns during equivalence thus resembled those involved in semantic processing underlying language, without involving regions concerned with the simple sub-vocal articulation of stimulus names.
[Citing Place (1995/6)]  

Dickins, T., & Dickins, D. (2001). Symbols, stimulus equivalence and the origins of language. Behavior and Philosophy, 29, 221-244. [Ullin Place Special Issue] www.jstor.org/stable/27759429
[Abstract]Recent interest in the origins of language, within the strongly cognitive field of Evolutionary Psychology, has predominantly focused upon the origins of syntax (cf. Hurford, Knight, & Studdert-Kennedy, 1998). However, Ullin Place's (2000a) theory of the gestural origins of language also addresses the more fundamental issue of the antecedents of symbols, and does so from a behaviorist perspective, stressing the importance of the peculiarly human ability to form stimulus equivalence classes. The rejection by many developmental psychologists of a behaviorist account of language acquisition has led to a modular and distinctly nativist psychology of language (cf. Pinker, 1994, 1997; Pinker & Bloom, 1990). Little has been said about the role or nature of learning mechanisms in the evolution of language. Although Place does not provide any defense of a behaviorist linguistic ontogeny, this is no reason to rule out his phylogenetic speculations. We aim to outline Place's evolutionarily parsimonious view of symbol origins and their relation to stimulus equivalence. We applaud Ullin Place for bringing symbols into focus within the broader discipline of language origins and suggest that he has raised an interesting set of questions to be discussed in future work.
[Citing Place (1995/6)]  [Citing Place (2000c)]  [Citing Place (2000g)]  
Download: Dickins (2001) Symbols, Stimulus Equivalence and the Origins of Language.pdf