Relating, orienting and evoking functions in an IRAP study involving emotional pictographs (emojis) used in electronic messages

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.