Design and Evaluate Procedures to Promote Emergent Relations and Generative Performance
If you’ve ever taught a child to read individual letters, then watched them suddenly decode a word they’d never seen before, you’ve witnessed something remarkable: emergent relations in action. In ABA, this phenomenon is more than a pleasant surprise—it’s a deliberate, teachable skill that can multiply your learner’s abilities far beyond what you directly trained.
This guide is for BCBAs, clinic owners, supervisors, and caregivers who want to understand how to design procedures that harness emergent relations and generative performance. We’ll walk through what these terms mean, why they matter in clinical practice, and how to systematically evaluate whether they’re actually happening.
What Are Emergent Relations and Generative Performance?
Emergent relations are untrained stimulus relations that appear after you teach related relations. If you teach a child that a spoken word (“dog”) matches a picture of a dog, and then teach that the picture matches the written word “dog,” the child may later match the spoken word directly to the written word—without you ever training that specific connection. That new, untrained relation is emergence in action.
Generative performance is the ability to produce new, untrained responses from previously learned skills. A child who learns sentence frames and several verbs can suddenly produce novel sentences they’ve never heard or practiced. A learner who masters the concept “bigger than” with three objects might apply it to five new objects without additional coaching. Generativity is flexibility—the capacity to recombine learned elements into fresh, functional responses.
The core mechanism behind both is elegant: training certain relations creates the conditions for other relations to develop without direct teaching. In ABA terms, this often happens through stimulus equivalence—a formal process where stimuli become functionally interchangeable within a class. When you establish that A equals B, and B equals C, learners can derive that A equals C, even if that link was never explicitly taught.
This differs from simple generalization, where a learner applies a trained skill to a new setting or stimulus. Generalization is “I learned to sit at the table in the kitchen, so I can sit at the table in the classroom.” Emergence is “I learned A-B and B-C, and now I can do A-C without being taught.” One is transfer of a trained response; the other is the birth of an entirely new relation.
Why This Matters in Real Practice
The practical case for emergent relations is strong. Efficient skill building is one reason: if you can teach a few core relations and have many more emerge automatically, you’re covering more ground with fewer training hours. In clinics with packed schedules and long waiting lists, this efficiency directly translates to more learners served and faster progress toward independence.
Emergent relations also promote flexible, adaptive responding. A child who can only follow trained instructions in exact contexts is limited. A child who has developed emergent relations between concepts, words, and actions can navigate novel situations, solve new problems, and participate more fully in everyday life. That flexibility is dignity. That flexibility is inclusion.
But there’s an equally important caution. Assuming emergence will happen without evidence is a common and costly mistake. Some learners and some relations simply don’t produce emergence, no matter how solid your teaching. Confusing rote memorization or prompted responding with true emergent behavior is another trap. A child who recites sentences in the exact order you modeled is not yet showing generativity. Without careful probing, you might assume your learner is more capable than they actually are—and miss the need for direct teaching where it’s needed most.
The ethical stakes are real. Poor design can waste valuable therapy time, delay necessary skills, or create false confidence in a learner’s independence. Strong design, by contrast, can unlock capabilities you didn’t know were possible and enable learners to thrive with less dependence on prompts and coaching.
Key Features and Defining Characteristics
Emergent relations have several hallmark features that distinguish them from other learning phenomena.
Emergence itself is the appearance of untrained relations after training related relations. You did not teach A-C, yet A-C now occurs. Generativity is the ability to create novel responses from learned units—new sentences from learned words, new problems solved using learned concepts. Systematic probing is how you verify emergence actually happened. Probes are unprompted test trials that assess untrained relations without feedback or reinforcement. And critically, functional relevance matters: an emergent relation only counts if it’s useful in the learner’s real world.
Not all trained relations produce emergence. Whether emergence occurs depends on several boundary conditions. Stimulus similarity matters: learners may find it easier to derive relations between stimuli that are visually or conceptually related. Training intensity plays a role: weak training on A-B and B-C may not support A-C emergence. Learner history is crucial: a child with strong relational learning skills may show emergence readily, while another learner may need more exemplars or a different teaching approach.
One critical distinction: you must separate emergent relations from prompted or coached responses. If you gave the child a hint or a prompt during the probe, that’s not emergence—that’s just good instruction with support. True emergence happens in unprompted trials, with no hints and no feedback.
When to Use Emergent Procedures in Clinical Practice
You don’t design for emergence in every program. Save this approach for goals where flexibility and broad learning are the priorities.
Teaching relational language is a classic fit. When you want a learner to understand “same” and “different,” “bigger” and “smaller,” or category concepts like “animals” and “vehicles,” emergent procedures shine. Instead of teaching every single item individually, you teach a set of exemplars and the relational concept, then probe for emergence to untrained items. A learner who grasps “same” through a few shapes can suddenly match any two identical objects—without training each combination.
Symbolic relations and math reasoning are another domain. Teaching that numerals correspond to quantities, or that groups can be added in different orders, sets up emergent relations that support flexible math thinking.
Generative language for conversation and expression benefits too. A learner who masters sentence frames and multiple verbs can begin generating novel, functional sentences for communication. A teen learning to discuss social topics can learn a few core discussion stems, then generate new statements adapted to different conversations.
Efficiency is often the decision driver: if your learner has limited session time or your clinic has a long waitlist, designing procedures that yield broad, emergent repertoires reduces the teaching burden. The learner also benefits from the independence that generativity brings.
Key Examples in ABA Practice
Let’s ground this in concrete scenarios.
Example 1: A-B, B-C, and Emergent A-C Relations
Picture teaching a young learner object names. You directly train:
- A-B: When shown the object (a toy car), the child says “car” when you point.
- B-C: When shown a picture of a car, the child points to a written word “car.”
Now you probe (unprompted, no hints):
- A-C: Show the written word “car” and ask, “What’s this?” The child says “car”—without you ever directly training that link.
This is transitivity: A leads to B, B leads to C, so A leads to C. The untrained relation emerged from the two trained relations.
Example 2: Multiple Exemplar Instruction for Novel Verbal Behavior
A child is learning action words (verbs) and simple sentence frames. Instead of drilling one verb in one frame repeatedly, you rotate:
- Tacting: “I see someone running. What are they doing?” → “Running.”
- Listener responding: “Touch the picture of someone running” → Child points.
- Reading: Child sees the word “running” and says it aloud.
You use different exemplars (running, jumping, eating) and cycle through multiple verbal operants. Later, the child encounters a new verb (“skipping”) and spontaneously produces novel sentences like “I am skipping” or “Look, they’re skipping!”—without that sentence being modeled. That’s generativity: new responses from learned units.
Both examples show how targeted teaching creates the conditions for broader, untrained responding to emerge.
Common Mistakes and Misconceptions
The biggest mistake is assuming emergence will happen automatically. New practitioners sometimes teach A-B and B-C, then expect A-C to occur without ever probing to confirm it. Hope is not a plan. You must probe systematically to know whether emergence is real or imagined.
Another frequent error is confusing mimicry or prompted answers with true emergent responding. A child who repeats a sentence you just modeled, or who answers correctly after you give a hint, is not showing generativity. Generativity is unprompted novel production—responses the learner created on their own.
A third pitfall is teaching too few exemplars. Some learners will show emergence after limited teaching; others need multiple, varied examples before the pattern becomes clear. If you teach a concept with only one or two examples, you may underestimate how much teaching the learner truly needs. Data from probes will tell you whether more exemplars are needed.
Finally, clinicians sometimes conflate fluency with generativity. A child might answer flashcards quickly and accurately—that’s fluency. But fluency on practiced items is not the same as generating novel responses. Generativity is broader, more flexible thinking. A fluent learner may still struggle with untrained relations until you explicitly teach those links.
Ethical Considerations in Design and Evaluation
Ethics matter profoundly here. Do not rely on emergent relations or generalization for safety-critical skills. Teaching a child an emergency protocol, safe food handling, or how to respond to a dangerous situation must involve direct, repeated, supervised practice. You cannot assume safety skills will emerge or generalize without explicit, controlled training.
Document your probes and decision rules thoroughly. A responsible procedure includes clear criteria for deciding when to intensify teaching, add exemplars, or switch to direct instruction. If emergence fails after a certain number of probe cycles, your documentation should show exactly what triggered the next intervention. This transparency protects the learner and defends your clinical judgment.
Use culturally and linguistically appropriate exemplars. When you select stimuli for teaching and probing, consider your learner’s background, home language, and cultural context. An emergent-relations procedure built on unfamiliar or culturally insensitive examples may fail—not because emergence is impossible, but because the exemplars were poorly chosen.
Respect learner consent and preferences. As always in ABA, ensure the learner (or their guardian) understands and agrees with the procedure. If a learner shows signs of frustration or fatigue during probing, pause and reassess. Emergence is not worth pursuing at the cost of the learner’s wellbeing.
Step-by-Step Workflow: Train, Probe, Interpret, Adjust
Here’s how the process unfolds in practice.
Train: Begin by directly teaching the target relations (A-B, B-C, or other planned sequences). Use clear instructions, meaningful reinforcement, and enough repetition for skill development. Track accuracy and mastery criteria for each trained relation.
Probe: Before or between training sessions, intersperse unprompted probe trials for untrained relations (A-C, symmetry tests, equivalence probes). Probes have no prompts, no feedback, and no reinforcement. You’re simply assessing whether the untrained relation has emerged. Record accuracy, latency, and response form.
Interpret: Look at your probe data across several sessions. Is performance on untrained relations reaching your criterion (often 80–85% accuracy across two sessions)? Is it stable? Are some probe types (e.g., symmetry) working while others (e.g., transitivity) are not?
Adjust: Based on probe outcomes, make a clear decision. If probes show strong emergence, continue monitoring and consider maintenance probes. If probes show weak or inconsistent emergence, increase exemplars, adjust your teaching method, vary contexts, or add direct training for the weak link. Document your decision and the data that led to it.
This Train → Probe → Interpret → Adjust cycle repeats until you have clear evidence that the learner has the skill you’re targeting.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I test for emergent relations?
Use unprompted probe trials. Present the sample stimulus, wait 3–5 seconds without hints, and record the learner’s response. Include multiple probe types (symmetry, transitivity, equivalence) to get a fuller picture. Counterbalance the order of probes across sessions, and include positive controls (trained relations) and negative controls (distractors). This design confirms that your learner is discriminating, not just guessing.
How many exemplars should I teach?
There’s no magic number. Use data and probes to decide. Start with a reasonable set (often 3–5 exemplars), teach them to mastery, then probe for emergence. If probes show weak emergence, add more exemplars and repeat. Some learners show emergence with few exemplars; others need many.
What’s the difference between emergence and generalization?
Generalization is applying a trained skill to a new context or stimulus. Emergence is an untrained relation that arises from trained relations—the learner is doing something new, something they were never directly taught. They’re related concepts, but they’re not the same, and the probing methods differ.
When should I switch from trying to evoke emergence to direct teaching?
Switch when probes show consistent failure after you’ve tried increasing exemplars and adjusting your approach. Also switch immediately if the skill is safety-critical or if the learner is clearly struggling. Use a decision rule: “If accuracy on probes remains below 80% after 10 sessions and 5 exemplars, I will teach this relation directly.” Document the rule and your adherence to it.
Can all learners develop generative performance?
Many can with appropriate instruction, but learner history and cognitive profile matter. Some learners show generativity readily; others need more direct teaching or benefit from a hybrid approach. It’s ethical and smart to individualize. There’s no shame in teaching directly when emergence doesn’t happen.
Key Takeaways
Emergent relations and generative performance are powerful tools for expanding a learner’s skills beyond what you explicitly teach. When designed well, they reduce training burden, promote independence, and build flexible thinking. When designed poorly—or when assumed to happen without evidence—they can delay progress and mask learning gaps.
Your responsibility is to plan systematic probes, teach thoughtfully with multiple exemplars, and use data to guide every decision. Don’t assume emergence; verify it. Don’t substitute emergence for direct teaching in safety-critical domains. And always document your procedures, your probe results, and the decisions you made based on the data.
Learners thrive when we balance efficiency with rigor, and ambition with humility. Emergent-relations procedures, used well, serve both the learner and the clinician.
Further Reading and Related Concepts
Emergent relations connect to several foundational ABA concepts. Derived relational responding is the umbrella term; emergence is one type. Stimulus equivalence is the formal framework that explains how untrained A-C relations arise from A-B and B-C training. Relational Frame Theory (RFT) offers a theoretical account of how humans derive and transform relations.
Assessment of verbal repertoires informs whether a learner is likely to show emergence and what teaching approach will work best. Prompting and fading must be tightly controlled during probes to ensure you’re seeing true emergence, not just good instruction with support. And measurement and mastery criteria help you define success clearly before you begin.
