7.17 Responding Based on Relative Size

As you’ve probably figured out by now, you were supposed to put the various pictures in the boxes in order of size (from smallest to biggest). By dragging the various objects into the boxes, you were making a relational response. You were responding to the objects based on the relations (in terms of size) among them.

Although several individual steps were involved, we’ll consider each act of putting a set of objects in the boxes a single performance or relational response. It’s kind of like how it is often useful to consider “running a marathon” a single performance or response, rather than a series of small, individual steps. This type of relational responding has some special features. To help illustrate these features, we’ll look at the response you made to these stars.