Henery, Robert2018-08-142018-08-142018-05https://hdl.handle.net/11299/199070University of Minnesota Ph.D. dissertation. May 2018. Major: Educational Psychology. Advisors: Jennifer McComas McComas, Frank Symons. 1 computer file (PDF); ix, 86 pages.The stimulus equivalence paradigm has been used in a small number of studies to examine attitudes and responding towards socially relevant stimuli. Two of these studies attempted to use match-to-sample (MTS) training to establish equivalence relations between a positive stimulus and faces of African descent (de Carvalho & de Rose, 2014; Mizael, de Almeida, Silveira, & de Rose, 2016). In the latter study by Mizael et al. (2016), a redesigned training and testing protocol was employed and all 13 of the participants showed equivalence class formation. Furthermore, the authors offered evidence that procedures based on equivalence and transfer of functions were able to reduce pre-experimental biases demonstrated by participants. The present study was a systemic replication of the training and testing protocol from Mizael et al. (2016) with a novel study population that included 8 East African and 7 Native American elementary age children. The school that these children attended reported frequent and hostile interactions between these groups of students. All 15 children learned relations during matching tasks that would potentially establish emergent relations between outgroup faces and positive stimuli. Fourteen of the 15 children showed equivalence class formation. All 15 children also completed an array of stereotyping and prejudice measures before and after delayed match-to-sample training (DMTS) and testing to detect any generalization of the DMTS training effects beyond the experimental context. Participant performance on those measures suggested little, if any, generalization of training effects. Results are discussed in terms of the utility of the stimulus equivalence paradigm for addressing the challenges related to stereotyping and prejudice.enconflicting relationsMTSprejudicestereotypingStimulus Equivalencetransfer of functionThesis or Dissertation