Research Topics

This research focuses on how we derive new knowledge that goes beyond the information given, or more technically, how we come to respond appropriately to relations among stimuli that have, in fact, never been associated in direct experience (i.e., they are "emergent"). We are particularly interested in the influence of extra-contingency behavior. This is learner behavior that is strictly speaking not required to be successful in a learning task, but may facilitate emergence of novel stimulus relations. 

Representative publications:

Carp et al. (2015) on intraverbal naming and equivalence class formation.

Cox & Petursdottir (2021) on effects of training sequence on emergent conditional discriminations.

This research focuses on how we derive new knowledge that goes beyond the information given, or more technically, how we come to respond appropriately to relations among stimuli that have, in fact, never been associated in direct experience (i.e., they are "emergent"). We are particularly interested in the influence of extra-contingency behavior. This is learner behavior that is strictly speaking not required to be successful in a learning task, but may facilitate emergence of novel stimulus relations. 

Representative publications:

Carp et al. (2015) on intraverbal naming and equivalence class formation.

Cox & Petursdottir (2021) on effects of training sequence on emergent conditional discriminations.

This research similarly focuses on how the outcomes of teaching are affected by procedural and design variables, but in the context of teaching communication skills to children with severe language delays due to neurodevelopmental disorders.

Representative publications:

Lepper & Petursdottir (2017) on the effects of response-contingent stimulus pairing on vocalization of speech sounds.

Thakore & Petursdottir (2021) on establishing divergent intraverbal responding.