The equivalence paradigm has been applied to the development of a variety of procedures applied to teach reading, writing and arithmetic. This work aimed to investigate the effect of teaching stimulus equivalence relations between three different forms of arithmetic sum problems on problem-solving behavior. Seven first grade students of Fundamental Schooling (=Elementary Schooling) were submitted to a pre-test, and a post-test with sum problems printed in the form of slave (A), operations (B) and word problems (C). The conditional discrimination procedure established relations between A-B and A-C. Six of seven participants responded accordingly to the established classes. The performance of the participants in the post-test was higher than in the pre-test. It was concluded that the establishment of equivalence relations between arithmetic sum problems in the form of slave, operations, and word problems enhanced the performance of the resolution of those types of problems.
Arithmetic problem-solving; addition; stimulus equivalence; conditional discrimination
