Studies have shown that the formation of ordinal classes emerge from separate sequence training. The reversal of ordinal functions becomes an important variable when a sequence is subjected to conditional control. The development of ordinal classes under conditional control has been verified when a chaining procedure was used to establish the original contingencies. The training of overlapping paired sequences (e.g. A1->A2, A2->A3, A3- >A4, and A4->A5) may lead to the true emergence of intra-sequential transitive relations. There have been no conclusive results when using an overlapping procedure with conditional control. This study investigated the emergence of ordinal relations in children when overlapping paired stimuli were employed in three experiments. The experimental sessions were conducted in a room located in an educational institution. An REL software program (Version 5.0 for windows) was utilized for stimulus presentation and response recording. The experimental task required sequential responses simultaneous stimuli displayed on the monitor, and correct responses received differential reinforcement during the training session. The purpose of the pilot study was to ascertain whether ordinal relations emerged when training involved overlapping two-stimulus sequences and functional reversals (e.g. when a green square elicited an A1->A2 response, or if a red square elicited an A2->A1 response). Three preschool children participated in the study, and the visual stimuli were cardinal numbers (Sequence “A”), written names of numbers (“B”), and quantities (“C”). The emergence of transitive relations was observed in two participants, and another exhibited ordinal class formation under conditional control. Subsequently, Experiment 1 analyzed the emergence of ordinal relations in eight additional children, following overlapping twostimulus sequence training (e.g. A1->A2, A2->A3 and so forth). Two sets of visual stimuli were used (numbers and quantities). All participants formed transitive relations and in most of them, ordinal class formation was observed as well as novel performance on a generalization test. Furthermore, five children from Experiment 1 participated in Experiment 2, and were exposed to overlapping two-stimulus sequence training on one set of stimuli (“A”) involving conditional control of color discrimination. The aim of this experiment was to investigate the effects of conditional control on ordinal relations. In all of these participants the emergence of transitive relations and ordinal class formation was verified. Three children produced pairs of the second sequence (“B”) under conditional control without direct training. However, performance on the sequence probes varied, apparently as a result of unprogrammed stimulus control. Finally, the discussion focused on the prerequisites for sequential responding under conditional control and its implications for the development of number concepts in children.
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