Stimulus equivalence among three forms of presentation of arithmetic problems: a study with adults and elderly

Behavior analysts have made important contributions to education, recently increasing contributions to teaching mathematical behaviors. This study aimed to investigate if the formation of equivalence relations among different forms of presentation of arithmetic problems improves problem solving perfor1 Endereco para correspondencia: Rua Duque de Caxias, 1235, Rolândia, PR, Brasil 86605-180. E-mail: haydu@uel.br Haydu, V. B., Lorencete, C. M., Eccheli, S. D. 50 mances. Participated four women in the literacy phase, aged between 37 and 71 years. Initially a pretest was applied composed of 45 arithmetic problems presented in different forms (operation, word-problem and balance). Teaching sessions were conducted to establish conditional relations between balance and operation (A-B), and balance and word problem (A-C), involving nine sets of stimuli of each type of presentation of the arithmetic problems to form nine stimuli equivalent classes. The sessions and the teaching procedure were repeated until at least 90% correct responses were emitted. The formation of equivalent classes was tested by means of baseline tests (A-B, B-C), symmetry (B-A, C-A) and equivalence (B-C, C-B). Finally, a post-test with the same problems of the pretest, but in different order, was applied. All participants showed increases in the percentage of correct responses in the posttest compared with the pretest. It was concluded that the establishment of equivalence relations between different forms of the presentation of arithmetic problems contributed to improve the performance of adults and seniors in solving problems with the unknowns set in different position.