Some theoretical questions and question-hypotheses concerning the IRAP and RFT:

The IRAP seems to be a measure of implicit preferences, in contrast with the explicit preferences. Explicit preferences are more influenced by social control (eg political correctness).

1. Does relational framing influence the more implicit preferences as well as the explicit? And if yes, how?

2. Can we say it’s good to be aware of our implicit preferences (as revealed by the IRAP) and make choices without bringing them into account? The implicit is good to know, to realize it’s there. But the explicit is the more important? We can learn to live our life in the direction of our explicit preferences. E.g.: ‘Muslims are terrorists’ vs ‘I want to live with all kinds of people. Not all Muslims are equal. I do respect them.’ IRAP might reveal the first relation, but the second could be more important.

3. When existing relational networks are extended with new S, will these S influence the implicit functions or the explicit or both (depending on context)?

4. when the implicit preferences and the explicit preferences are different, contextual influences are responsible for these differences? Experiential avoidance, political correctness, … If these contextual S are not present, the implicit and explicit preferences are growing more toward each other?

5. cognitive therapy is working on the explicit relations by social control? After cognitive therapy the implicit positions might stay unchanged?

6. when the social pressure is very high (IRAP on ‘Muslims are terrorists’ taken by a clearly Muslim researcher and without anonymity) even the implicit measures could be influenced? (contextual cues are stronger).

7. explicit, but perhaps also implicit preferences can reverse? E.g. the Muslim-experiment described above: when after a while the apparently-Muslim researcher says he’s anti-Muslim (eg political refugee) – after this the IRAP-scores might reverse?

Francis De Groot

francis.de.groot@fracarita.org

First, I would like to say that, from my reading of Part I. in the RFT book, it seems the overall program of research has a stable foothold within behavior analysis. This is further accentuated by the fact that applied research is beginning to appear in the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis (see Ninness et al.)in which RFT principles are built into a computer program which teaches trigonomic functions and their graphical representations in an efficient manner. Believe me, it works...I am a co-author on the latest of these RFT/math studies, and, coming into the project, I knew pretty much nothing about functions and their graphical representations but after approx. an hour in the program as a pilot subject I had a firm grasp on the concepts...as well as many novel formulae and graphs never before seen.

Because work like this is emerging along side a strong basic research program, I think RFT is here to stay. As for its future, I have been working on a way to study meta/macrocontingencies and cultural materialism in a basic laboratory setting. This area is the domain of "cultural analysis," or "behavioral anthropology," and even crosses over into OBM. When studied behavior-analytically the phrase "culture" is really synonymous with "social behavior."

If this basic research catches on, I predict the future could see a merging of both research programs in order to study how relational framing operates in relation to social behavior. The beauty about this particular social-behavioral research program is that it begins (presumably) in a laboratory setting analogous to the most basic contexts which give rise to interlocking contingencies as they occur in nature, and as they (presumably) occurred in the evolution of cultures. So, this program would (presumably) be the most thourough, inductive, investigation of social behavior to-date. This is similar to the beginnings of the behavior-analytic research program in general: Skinner started with the most basic contexts and slowly built upon them until now, where we can study language and cognition, and do so in an inductive, non-hypothetical, manner.

Perhaps combining RFT with such research could reveal principles relevant to symbolic behavior, myths, taboos, and "norms" etc... but would do so with the precision of a basic behavioral laboratory. Other basic researchers are already hard at work developing an equation of choice behavior, perhaps a few decades will reveal equations of norms, taboos, and even a "terrorism equation." It seems pretty far-fetched, but what an exciting way to earn a living!

Shawn Boles added on 4/25/2006:

Tony Biglan has written on this as well.

Changing Cultural Practices

Hardcover: 464 pages
Publisher: Context Press (January 1, 1995)
Language: English
ISBN: 1878978225

RFT and magical thinking: hypothesis

A hypothesis: is it possible that the period of ‘magical thinking’ in the development of children (enduring until adulthood) is depending on the development of processes central in RFT: developing of mutual entailment, literality of thoughts, reason giving and causal thinking? When children are developing those skills, but aren’t fully acquainted with them, they might more easily fall in the traps of magical thinking.

Possible test: children who are later in developing those skills, should show delayed magical thinking too (and vice versa).

Francis De Groot

francis.de.groot@fracarita.org

I challenged the RFT list serve to come up with some good solid predictions that went beyond the several dozen in the RFT book.

This list, raw and unfiltered, is the result. Some of these ideas are great. Some seem off. And anyone was and is allowed to play. But it seemed more important to get people thinking than to get it right if "right" meant that some "leader" says "this is right."

If you have ideas, back up to the next highest level and add a child page and put yours out there!

- S

Steve Hayes

Predictions from Steve

• Responding in accordance with a coherent relational network will take less time (on average) than responding in accordance with an incoherent network (subject, of course, to the usual caveats concerning individual histories).

• Relating derived relations will produce some of the same effects that have been observed for analogical reasoning

• RFT models of semantic relations, analogy, executive function tasks, perspective-taking and the like should produce neural effects that overlap to some degree with the effects observed in the mainstream neuro-cog literature.

• Increasing the extent, flexibility, and fluency of relational frames, relational networks, relating relations, relating relational networks, the transformation of functions, and contextual control over each of these, should impact positively on a variety of standard measures of human language and cognition.

Steve posted a list of new things RFT does to the Academy of Cognitive Therapy
June 2005. The list was:

RFT:

• Provides new ways to do language training

• Has lead to a new and increasingly empirically supported psychotherapy
  (ACT) and to quite number of new psychotherapy techniques

• Suggests how to establish a sense of self in children

• Shows some of how to train children in "theory of mind"

• Gives a process account of mindfulness

• Predicts how many basic cognitive skills form

• Predicts new ways to increase openness to new learning

• Explains some of where psychological rigidity comes from

• Leads to a new model of psychopathology

• Suggests some of the core skills involves in language and its subskills such as analogy and metaphor

• Shows why existing information processing research in specific areas (e.g., analogy) is flawed and show how to correct that flaw

• Predicts new methods how to increase some intellectual abilities

• Predicts new methods for how to increase motivation verbally

• Predicts some new methods to decrease motivation verbally

• Has lead to new ways we might assess current cognitive relations

• Explains some of why cognitive fusion emerges, why it is harmful, and what to do about it

• Explains some of why experiential avoidance emerges, why it is harmful, and what to do about it

• Provides unexpected predictions about neurobiological responses to specific cognitive tasks

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What happens to Crel and Cfun in RFT studies when you teach folks to apply defusion during testing, and or when you teach defusion, train, and then test? I am thinking of M Dougher's recent study with > or < relations with shock. I wonder whether defusion would alter the transformation, perhaps leading subjects to not rip off the shock electrodes in the context of > relation. I wonder whether defusion would strengthen or perhaps weaken Crel and/or Cfun. My guess is that it may result in more rapid learning of Crel, but knock out Cfun. This would be cool to show. Maybe someone has done this, but if not we really should cook up some experiments along these lines.

-j forsyth

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1. Additional corollary hypotheses:
(A) Speed of acquisition of AARR during an REP task (i.e., number of trials needed to respond consistently correctly) will correlate significantly and inversely with verbal IQ. (can’t recall off hand if Denis O’Hora has already tested this specifically yet).
(B) This one would be a doozie to quantify and test, but it follows from RFT: Subjects presented with a novel metaphor who generate higher numbers of apt comparisons (especially in shorter amounts of time) will perform better (i.e., will respond correctly more frequently and given less training trials) in an REP task that assesses their ability to correctly derive relations after two previously trained frames are brought into coordination.
2. Additional corollary hypotheses:
(A) AARR in fully verbal subjects will fail to occur over time within an experimental context, given a consistent lack of reinforcement for AARR and/or consistent punishment of AARR within that context.
3. Additional corollary hypotheses:
(A) The same established verbal relation (e.g., A is similar to B, which is similar to C) can be shown to accompany different functional transformations across different experimental contexts.
(B) Identical functional transformations can be shown to be achieved through the training of different verbal relations.

J T

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read some RFT-research on the change of psychological function of stimulus C by putting it in relation with A-B (sexual excitement, taste preference, mood). What if C is relationally framed with 2 different classes: A-B-C, and X-Y-C. And let's say A is experienced a bit negative, and X also a bit negative. Would C become experienced more negative, than when it's framed with only one class? This might be an operationalisation of multiple small life experiences leading to a larger reaction.

De Groot, Francis [francis.de.groot@fracarita.org]