Desenvolvimento do conceito de equivalência de estímulos por Sidman, reações da comunidade científica e a influência destas reações no desenvolvimento do conceito

Abstract

The behavior of the scientist is subject to the same laws as any other behavior. It differs from other behaviors because of the contingencies set by the scientific community. Part of the events presented by the scientific community is composed by the reactions of its members to new data and new conceptual proposals. Such reactions seem to play an important role in the emergence of new scientific theories and in the modification of preexisting theories. Based on this, the general objective of this work was to historically analyze the development of the concept of stimulus equivalence in Murray Sidman's work, some reactions of the scientific community to Sidman's data and conceptual proposals on stimulus equivalence, and to examine Sidman's responses to the reactions of these authors. From these general objectives, three studies were carried out in order to build and characterize a list of Sidman's publications; to examine the development of the concept of equivalence of stimuli between 1971 and 1994; to analyze the reactions of the scientific community to Sidman (1971), between 1971 and 1982; to briefly characterize the works published between 1982 and 1994 that quoted Sidman (1971) and/or Sidman and Tailby (1982); to analyze a possible dialogue between Sidman and S. Hayes between 1982 and 1994. It was possible to verify, during the period between 1971 and 1982, that Sidman and his collaborators ivestigated problems that appeared in literature outside behavior analysis, such as neurology and neurolinguistics, but that their research did not have a strong impact on these scientific communities. Nor does there seem to have been especially relevant contributions from members of the scientific community for the development of the concept of stimulus equivalence. Later, between 1982 and 1994, the impact on the scientific community was notably increased, especially among behavioral analysts, and researches and discussions by community members, in addition to Sidman's direct collaborators, seem to have exerted influence in the development of the concept