Assessing a Derived Transformation of Functions Using the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure Under Three Motivative Conditions

Grappling with the Complexity of Behavioral Processes in Human Psychological Suffering: Some Potential Insights from Relational Frame Theory

Relational frame theory (RFT) has historically been considered the basic explanatory science behind acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). However, some have argued that there has been an increasing separation between the two in recent years. The primary aim of the current article is to explore the extent to which RFT concepts, particularly those that have been proposed recently in the context of "up-dating" the theory, may be used to build stronger links between basic and applied behavior analyses in which there is a shared language of relatively precise technical terms. As an example of this strategy, we outline RFT process-based experimental and conceptual analyses of the impact of one of the most widely used sets of interventions employed in the ACT literature, defusion. In addition, we suggest a potential experimental methodology for analyzing the basic behavioral processes involved. Overall, the current article should be seen as part of a broader research agenda that aims to explore how RFT may be used to provide a functional-analytic abstractive treatment of the behavioral processes involved in human psychological suffering.

The IRAP as a Measure of Implicit Cognition: A Case of Frankenstein’s Monster

The implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) was initially developed as a way to assess the strength and probability of natural verbal relations, as defined within relational frame theory (RFT), and was conceptually rooted within the behavior-analytic tradition. However, the IRAP quickly became employed primarily as a measure of implicit cognition, more in line with mainstream psychology than behavior analysis. In doing so, research using the IRAP increasingly employed ill-defined mainstream psychological terms, focused on correlational analyses with traditional psychometry, and thus emphasized prediction over the prediction-and-influence of behavior. Although perhaps beneficial to the study of implicit cognition, this approach could be argued to have limited the IRAP's utility in behavior analyses of human language and cognition. In the current article we will reflect on this suggestion, on the IRAPs place and current use in the field of behavior analysis, and on its potential future within behavioral psychology in light of recent conceptual and empirical advances in RFT. In doing so, it is hoped that the measure may be refined into a better understood, more precise, functional-analytic tool.

Relational frame theory 20 years on: The Odysseus voyage and beyond

The seminal text on relational frame theory (RFT) was published 20 years ago and purported to offer a single overarching behavior-analytic account of human language and cognition. In the years thereafter, an increasing number of empirical and conceptual articles, book chapters in edited volumes, and whole volumes devoted to the account emerged. In recent years, RFT has experienced a period of intense empirical and conceptual development, facilitated in part by a research grant awarded by the Flanders Science Foundation, under its Odysseus program. This research program aimed to advance and extend the RFT account beyond the rendition presented in the seminal Hayes et al. (2001) volume. The current article aims to provide an overview of this research program, the empirical work and concepts it gave rise to, and their implications for an RFT account of human symbolic language and cognition. Overall, therefore, the article provides an account of relatively recent developments in RFT that extend beyond the 2001 volume and thus will, we hope, inform future research and critiques of the theory going forward.

The influence of training procedure and stimulus valence on the long-term maintenance of equivalence relations

In the current research, we aimed at extending Silveira et al. (2016) results by verifying whether the long-term maintenance of the equivalence classes is influenced by stimulus valence and MTS training procedures. The delayed and simultaneous MTS were used to train two groups of participants in series of conditional relation trials involving pictures of humans' faces expressing familiar emotions (A) and abstract forms (B, C, and D). The participants that demonstrated the emergence of novel BD and DB relations and class-consistent derived transfer of functions returned to the laboratory thirty days later. Follow-up assessments were given in which the probability of class-consistent responses was higher for the happy class only for participants exposed to DMTS training. This result shows that the maintenance of equivalence classes cannot be accounted for only in terms of the affective valence of the familiar stimulus. The affective valence of the happy faces may have yoked with the properties of DMTS, favoring the maintenance of the happy class. Thereby, we discussed the role of mediating verbal behavior evoked selectively by the pictures of happy faces appearing as samples that may have persisted during the delay interval as a possible mechanism underlying performances of participants trained in DMTS procedure.

The Study of Rule-Governed Behavior and Derived Stimulus Relations: Bridging the Gap

The concept of rule-governed behavior or instructional control has been widely recognized for many decades within the behavior-analytic literature. It has also been argued that the human capacity to formulate and follow increasingly complex rules may undermine sensitivity to direct contingencies of reinforcement, and that excessive reliance upon rules may be an important variable in human psychological suffering. Although the concept of rules would appear to have been relatively useful within behavior analysis, it seems wise from time to time to reflect upon the utility of even well-established concepts within a scientific discipline. Doing so may be particularly important if it begins to emerge that the existing concept does not readily orient researchers toward potentially important variables associated with that very concept. The primary purpose of this article is to engage in this reflection. In particular, we will focus on the link that has been made between rule-governed behavior and derived relational responding, and consider the extent to which it might be useful to supplement talk of rules or instructions with terms that refer to the dynamics of derived relational responding.