Relational Frame Theory (RFT)

Perspective-taking interventions have been shown to improve attitudes toward social outgroups. In contrast, similar interventions have produced opposite effects (i.e., enhanced negativity) in the context of attitudes toward elderly groups. The current study investigated whether a brief perspective-taking intervention enhanced with mindfulness would be associated with less negativity than perspective-taking alone. One hundred five participants were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 conditions which comprised of an active or control perspective-taking component and an active or control mindfulness component. Participants were then administered an Implicit Associated Test to assess implicit biases toward the elderly. Results supported previous findings in that the condition in which perspective-taking was active but mindfulness was inactive was associated with greater negative implicit bias toward the elderly; however, some of this negativity decreased in the active perspective-taking and active mindfulness condition. The current findings and other mixed effects that have emerged from perspective-taking interventions are discussed from a Relational Frame Theory perspective.

Most natural sciences aspire to a unified theory, such as Einstein's unified field theory that would specify how all space and time behave under changes in the parameters of the total field. This chapter presents a summary of the middle level terms that comprise the acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) hexaflex, as well as mention of a number of additional middle-level terms commonly used by ACT practitioners and researchers. It discusses how the contextual behavioral science (CBS) community can harness each of its elements to progress the science toward a unified theory. The chapter considers whether the recently proposed reticulating model can facilitate this agenda. It addresses the question of how successfully one can close the gap between relational frame theory (RFT) and ACT. The chapter considers future directions for basic research in the service of a unified theory for CBS. It argues strongly for the advancement of basic science.

This chapter provides an overview of the general learning prerequisite skills for derived relational responding. These include establishing preferences, on-task behavior, generalized imitation, attending to others, simple and complex discriminations and joint attention and social referencing. The chapter provides an overview of Skinner's verbal operants and explores how these speak to relational frame theory (RFT) account, particularly with regard to the distinction between nonverbal and verbal behavior. It summaries the different relational frames identified thus far and of some of the evidence supporting these concepts, as well as consideration of the optimal training sequence for establishing or facilitating the various frames. The chapter explores what appear to be among the most complex types of relational responding proposed by RFT, namely the perspective-taking relations and analogical reasoning, again summarizing evidence in support of each area.

This chapter considers how the ability to relationally frame sets the stage for the emergence of language and how the former's generative and flexible nature accounts for much of the latter's utility. It also highlights how relational framing rapidly increases in both scale and complexity, expanding from the relating of individual stimuli to the relating of relational networks to other networks. The chapter describes the notion of “cognition” and considers how different types and properties of relational framing play a role in perspective-taking, intelligence, and implicit cognition. It concludes by providing a brief overview of the key achievements of relational frame theory (RFT) research to date. However, by specifying variables that facilitate prediction-and-influence, RFT seems to extend beyond alternative accounts, providing a comprehensive, theoretically unified, empirically grounded, and practically applicable account of complex human behavior.

This chapter introduces the origins of, as well as arguments and evidence for, relational frame theory (RFT). It presents the study of arbitrarily applicable relational responding (AARR) to its historical roots and explains why this phenomenon has occupied the attention of behavioral scientists for over 40 years now. The chapter highlights a number of features of relational responding that becomes important when linking RFT to language and cognition later on. It examines how RFT carves this type of operant behavior into two different varieties (nonarbitrarily and arbitrarily applicable) and discusses how the latter may not only provide an explanation for stimulus equivalence, but for other types of derived stimulus relations as well. The chapter focuses on relational coherence, complexity, and levels of derivation in RFT is serving to inject a much needed emphasis on the role of reinforcement contingencies in understanding AARR.

This chapter presents the strategies that are based on relational frame theory (RFT) and relates specifically to the complex human abilities of, following instructions or rules, and interacting with our own behavior. According to RFT, these two core areas suggest potentially useful perspectives on how one might do effective therapy and they also provide an understanding of what, to some extent, brings individuals into psychological therapy in the first place. As repertoires of relational framing emerge and flourish, one formulates all kinds of stories in relation to the external and social world and these are controlled by contextual cues provided by that world. The chapter discusses the view that deficits in the relational repertoires correspond to psychological rigidity and form a central process of psychological suffering in general and of clinical problems in particular, and that training these very repertoires is a key task in psychological treatment.

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of the basic and applied wings of relational frame theory (RFT). It addresses the origins of the theory from the personal perspective of the person who first conceptualized the account. Behavioral psychology, consistent with a bottom-up approach to science, is built upon generally agreed units of analysis. The critical point about RFT is that the functional response unit involves relating, rather than pressing a key or pointing at a stimulus. The chapter proposes a conceptual framework that helps to guide future research on the dynamics of relational framing and conceptualize these dynamics in a three-dimensional space, involving degrees of derivation, complexity, and coherence in arbitrarily applicable relational responding. The multidimensional multilevel (MDML) framework conceptualizes virtually all such clinically relevant behaviors as verbal, but explains the clear differences in terms of multiple dimensions.

Learning can be defined functionally as the impact of regularities in the environment on behavior. The concept of environmental regularities is a crucial part of this definition because it (a) improves the scope and depth of the definition and (b) provides ways to differentiate between different types of learning. We argue that this concept is useful also for conceptualizing learning from the perspective of Relational Frame Theory. More specifically, even if all instances of learning qualify as instances of arbitrarily applicable relational responding, different types of learning could still be functionally different because they involve different types of proximal regularities.

To find the full text version of this article and others (as well as download a full text .pdf.), ACBS members can visit the ScienceDirect homepage here.

Cognitive neuroscience has developed many approaches to the study of learning that might be useful to functionally oriented researchers, including those from a relational frame theory (RFT) perspective. We focus here on two examples. First, cognitive neuroscience often distinguishes between habit and goal-directed reinforcement learning, in which only the latter is sensitive to proximal changes in behavior-environment contingencies. This distinction is relevant to RFT’s original concerns about how rule-based processes can sometimes render an individual’s behavior maladaptive to changing circumstances. Second, the discovery of neurophysiological structures associated with fear extinction and generalization can potentially yield new insights for derived relational responding research. In particular, we review how such work not only informs new ways of modifying the functions transformed in derived relational responding, but also new ways of measuring derived relational responding itself. Overall, therefore, existing conceptual and methodological advances in the cognitive neuroscience literature addressing learning appear to generate functionally interesting predictions related to RFT that might not have surfaced from a traditional functional analysis of behavior.

To find the full text version of this article and others (as well as download a full text .pdf.), ACBS members can visit the ScienceDirect homepage here.

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) is a contemporary account of language and cognition rooted in behavior analysis. This paper presents a citation analysis of the RFT literature that follows on from that conducted by Dymond, May, Munnelly and Hoon (2010) who examined the evidence base for and impact of RFT between 1991 and 2008. The current analysis focused on Empirical and Non-Empirical studies citing RFT-related search terms and their publishing outlets in the period from 2009 to 2016. An emphasis was placed on Empirical RFT articles, which were organized by frames targeted, country of origin and participant demographics. The analysis revealed 521 papers that met inclusion criteria. Of these 288 (55.3%) were Empirical and 233 (44.7%) were Non-Empirical. The Empirical category included 160 (30.7%) Empirical RFT and 128 (24.6%) Empirical Other. The Non-Empirical category included 110 (21.1%) Review and 123 (23.6%) Conceptual. This analysis provides further evidence of substantial growth in RFT research.

To find the full text version of this article and others (as well as download a full text .pdf.), ACBS members can visit the ScienceDirect homepage here.