Hi there! First of all, I want to start this week’s post by thanking YOU (so much!) for stopping by Behavior by Design! Whether this is your first visit or you’ve been following along since the beginning, I’m truly grateful you’re here. It’s been incredibly rewarding to share both my graduate school journey at UMass Global and my growing experience as a Clinical Supervisor/Program Manager, and I’m excited to see this community continue to grow!
Over the past several weeks at UMass Global, we’ve built a strong foundation in behavior analysis by exploring reinforcement, punishment, stimulus control, and verbal behavior. Each week leaves me even more fascinated by the science behind learning and behavior. This week was no exception as we explored one of my favorite topics so far: Emergent Relations. I love this concept because it demonstrates that effective teaching is about so much more than helping someone memorize information, it’s about helping learners make meaningful connections and discover new knowledge by themselves beyond what they were directly taught.
Learning Beyond Direct Teaching
Think back to when you first learned to read. You probably didn’t memorize every possible combination of letters, words, and pictures individually. Instead, once you learned enough relationships, many new ones seemed to “click.”
This is the idea behind emergent relations.
In behavior analysis, emergent relations occur when a learner demonstrates a new skill or relationship without being directly taught that specific relation. Instead, the new learning emerges because of previously established relationships between stimuli.
For example, imagine a child learns:
- The spoken word “dog” matches a picture of a dog.
- The picture of a dog matches the written word DOG.
Without anyone explicitly teaching it, the child may then correctly match the spoken word “dog” to the written word DOG. This new relationship has emerged from prior learning rather than direct instruction.
To me, this is one of the most exciting aspects of ABA. It shows that good teaching doesn’t just produce isolated skills—it creates opportunities for learners to develop entirely new ones.
Stimulus Equivalence: Making Connections
This week’s coursework also introduced stimulus equivalence, a process through which different forms of the same concept become connected.
Three important components make this possible:
Reflexivity
Reflexivity is recognizing that a stimulus is the same as itself. For example, if a learner is shown a picture of an apple, they can correctly match it to the identical picture without direct instruction.
Symmetry
Symmetry occurs when a learner reverses a previously taught relationship. For instance, if they are taught to match the spoken word “apple” to a picture of an apple, they can later see the picture and say “apple” without being directly taught that reverse relationship.
Transitivity
Transitivity occurs when learners combine two previously learned relationships to derive a completely new one. If they learn that the spoken word “dog” matches a picture of a dog and that the picture matches the written word DOG, they can later match the spoken word directly to the written word—even though that specific relationship was never taught.
Together, these three properties allow different forms of the same concept to become members of an equivalence class. Rather than memorizing isolated facts, learners begin making meaningful connections that support more efficient, flexible, and independent learning. This process is often referred to as generative learning because learners are able to demonstrate new skills and relationships without direct instruction.
As someone working in the field of ABA, I find this especially fascinating because it reinforces the importance of teaching in a way that promotes understanding, not just repetition. Our goal isn’t simply to teach individual responses—we want to create learning experiences that help clients make connections, generalize skills, and apply what they’ve learned across people, settings, and situations.
Bringing It Back to Clinical Practice
Drawing on nearly four years of experience as an RBT, and now stepping into a Clinical role has given me a new perspective on how these concepts influence the way behavior analysts design effective instruction and promote meaningful learning.
Rather than asking, “How can I teach this one skill?” we’re encouraged to think more broadly:
- What prerequisite skills does the learner already have?
- Can today’s teaching lead to additional learning tomorrow?
- How can we arrange instruction so learners begin making connections on their own?
These questions reflect the thoughtful, evidence-based approach that makes behavior analysis such a rewarding field.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the opportunity to support Behavior Technicians through coaching, modeling treatment procedures, reviewing data collection, and updating clinical programming as clients master skills and move on to new learning targets. It’s rewarding to see how the concepts I’m studying are directly informing my clinical decision-making and helping me become a more effective in my role.
One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned so far is that meaningful progress isn’t measured solely by the number of programs a client completes. It’s reflected in their ability to use those skills independently, across different environments, and in ways that improve their quality of life. Emergent learning is a perfect example of this philosophy—it demonstrates that effective teaching can produce learning that extends well beyond what was directly taught.
The Journey Continues
Next week, we’ll be learning about Matching Law and its role in understanding how behavior is allocated across available response options. We’ll explore how the frequency of our choices is often influenced by the history and rate of reinforcement associated with each option, and how this principle helps behavior analysts better understand decision-making in both clinical practice and everyday life.
I’m looking forward to learning more about how the Matching Law can be applied to promote meaningful behavior change and optimize intervention strategies. As always, I’ll be sharing my reflections and key takeaways here on Behavior by Design.
Until next time, thank you for following along on this journey through graduate school and clinical practice. Every week reinforces that behavior analysis is about so much more than changing behavior—it’s about understanding how people learn, make connections, make choices, and develop the skills they need to communicate, grow, and thrive.
See you next week!
Rose Ally xoxo
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