Want to learn RFT through mentorship?

Submit an email to Patrick Smith with the subject line "RFT Mentor Match Request." Please provide some details about yourself, your familiarity with RFT, your broad interests related to RFT, your preferences regarding compensating a mentor for their time, and any other information you feel would be important for us to know for helping connect you with a mentoring opportunity that will work for you.

Want to offer mentoring?

Use the "Find a Mentor" form* linked here to submit your details and express interest in providing mentoring through our mentor match service.

_{*Note: Disregard the Part 1 & 3 links. This form is also used in the BiAnnual SIG survey. Those links will only work during the survey periods.}

Frequently Asked Questions:

What is RFT Mentor Match?

Learning and applying Relational Frame Theory can be challenging.  Much of the nuanced knowledge is not well documented. Learning through mentorship can be a very efficient way to accelerate you toward your RFT goals.  The RFT Special Interest Group within ACBS represents the highest concentration of those experts.  To facilitate dissemination and advancement of Relational Frame Theory, the SIG Steering Committee provides a matching service between mentors interested in working with learners and those learners.  On and ongoing basis, we survey the community for members willing to mentor.  When you submit a match request, we compare your request to available mentors and make introductions when we feel there is a likely valued fit.

Who Should Apply to Mentor Match?

Any learner interested in advancing their RFT goals.  You may be a student, academic, professional, or even someone from outside the community who needs to get up to speed quickly.  

Who are the available mentors?

Available mentors range across applied practitioner, academic faculty, and knowledgeable community members.  Mentor availability changes and we want to ensure good fit between potential mentor and mentee so we don't disclose specifics.  Most potential mentors have demonstrated significant contribution to the RFT community.

Will I have to pay for mentoring?

Many of our mentors provide mentoring and coaching as a professional service. Some may provide all or some of the mentor match time at no cost or a values based fee. The Mentor Match initiative does not require free work from the mentors.  When mentors volunteer to be listed in the Mentor Match, their preference regarding providing paid, free, or some hybrid compensation of mentoring is part of the application.  Mentee applicants will be notified of these preferences if a suitable match is identified.  It is up to the mentor and mentee to agree to how the mentoring relationship will be compensated.

What are the steps of the matching process?

1. Potential mentors submit their information using the "Find a Mentor" form* linked here or during the BiAnnual Survey.
2. Applicant mentees submit their match request emails as described above.
3. Once a match request email comes in, SIG Steering Committee members review the request and the available mentors.  
4. If an available mentor is a good match for the mentee, a Steering Committee member will reach out to that potential mentor to verify their availability and current interest in taking on a mentee.  In the initial reach out to potential mentors, the applicant mentee ID will not be revealed to the potential mentor but some details relevant to checking match fit may be disclosed. This is why it is important for applicants to be clear and forthcoming about providing relevant information.  
5. If there is initial interest and availability by the potential mentor, the applicant will be provided relevant contact information for their matched mentor. At that point, applicant mentees are expected to reach out to their matched mentor. At the request of the applicant mentee, the steering committee may facilitate an introduction.

Because the goal of this program is high quality connections, we may not match applicants or potential mentors. Sincere efforts will be made to create valued matches, but matching is not guaranteed.

If you do not get matched, you are always welcome to apply again after the next round of the BiAnnual Survey.

What Mentor Match is NOT:

Mentor Match is not an employment service. Mentoring can be a very effective step toward career opportunities, but we are not placing applicants in jobs here. If you have a job opening, please share it to the RFT SIG listserve or email it to a Steering Committee Member to reshare at their discretion.

Mentor Match is not a graduate school application. Many graduate programs are built around mentoring. Some of our available mentors are also graduate faculty. Do not apply to mentor match as a substitute for an official grad school application. If you are pursuing admission into a graduate program that includes RFT, good luck. Make sure you apply through that program's official process.

Still Have Questions?

Further Questions about Mentor Match should be directed to Patrick Smith, or the current Community Engagement Steering Committee Member.

There is an extensive list of excellent articles that describe RFT in simple terms, and links the principles directly to ACT processes. We highly recommend reading some of these to further your understanding RFT and it's relation to ACT.

Please visit the page by clicking here.

Richard Vanromunde has written an extensive blogseries on RFT, it's freely accessible here:
https://edotora.nl/rft-woordenboek/
 

From Richard:
It is in Dutch, but with Chat GPT you'll get an ok translation.
If anybody is interested in helping translate it into English, please contact Richard (info@edotora.nl).

It's still a work in progress, but currently, you can find information about the following subjects:
Philosophy:
- Introduction in to Pepper
- Pepper's two inadequate world hypotheses
- Pepper's four adequate world hypotheses
- Eclecticism
- Functional Contextualism

What you can expect:
Philosophy:
- Dualism
- Monism
- Understanding the goal of Functional Contextualism
- Behavioral Pragmatism
- Interbehavioral field

Theory:
- Relational Responding
- Conditioning (classical and operant) as classes of Relational Responding
- (D)AARRing
- RFT
- RFT as a field
- ROE/updated RFT

An Introduction to Relational Frame Theory is a fully online, self-paced, interactive, multimedia tutorial designed to introduce the basic concepts and approach of Relational Frame Theory (RFT). It was developed by Dr. Eric J. Fox and first released in 2004, and has been regularly updated and maintained by FoxyLearning since 2010. An open-access version can be completed for free, a CEU version can be completed at CEUniverse to earn 7 continuing education units to maintain certification as a Board Certified Behavior Analyst (BCBA), and instructors or trainers can assign a low-cost version of the free version as a supplement to their course or training. The tutorial was written and designed for a very broad audience, and helps users to gain mastery over complex concepts in RFT by breaking them down and allowing the user to practice them along the away. It is hoped that everyone from undergraduate psychology students to doctoral-level psychologists to any educated person on the street (or on the web!) will find the material accessible, engaging, and relevant.

In 2005 the tutorial received the Nova Southeastern Award for Outstanding Practice by a Graduate Student in Instructional Design from the Design & Development division of the Association for Educational Communications & Technology. With an award name that long, you know it's got to be good.

Visit FoxyLearning to learn more!

There are numerous resources for further reading. These are simply a few suggestions and you may find many others helpful. We highly recommend using this list as a starting point from which to begin your journey. We also recommend you click on this link to see a longer list of RFT/Behavior Analysis books and also to use the Publications list as an instrument for guiding your own path of learning.

Top 10 RFT Research Articles

In Spring 2023, the RFT SIG took on the task of developing an unofficial list of top RFT research articles to help people know where to start diving into the literature. The categories were “Just Getting Started” and “Contemporary and Advanced”.

Just Getting Started

• Hayes, S. C., Law, S., Assemi, K., Falletta-Cowden, N., Shamblin, M., Burleigh, K., ... & Smith, P. (2021). Relating is an operant: A fly over of 35 years of RFT research. Perspectivas em Análise do Comportamento, 12(1), 5-32.
• Cassidy, S., Roche, B., & O’Hora, D. (2010). Relational frame theory and human intelligence. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 11(1), 37-51.
• Barnes-Holmes, D., Barnes-Holmes, Y., & Cullinan, V. (2000). Relational frame theory and Skinner’s Verbal Behavior: A possible synthesis. The Behavior Analyst, 23(1), 69-84.
• Ming, S., Moran, L., & Stewart, I. (2014). Derived relational responding and generative language: Applications and future directions for teaching individuals with autism spectrum disorders. European Journal of Behavior Analysis, 15(2), 199-224.
• Blackledge, J. T. (2003). An introduction to relational frame theory: Basics and applications. The Behavior Analyst Today, 3(4), 421.
• Stewart, I., McElwee, J., & Ming, S. (2013). Language generativity, response generalization, and derived relational responding. The Analysis of Verbal Behavior, 29(1), 137-155.
• Pelaez, M., & Monlux, K. (2018). Development of communication in infants: Implications for stimulus relations research. Perspectives on Behavior Science, 41(1), 175-188.
• McEnteggart, C. (2018). A brief tutorial on acceptance and commitment therapy as seen through the lens of derived stimulus relations. Perspectives on Behavior Science, 41(1), 215-227.
• Healy, O., Barnes‐Holmes, D., & Smeets, P. M. (2000). Derived relational responding as generalized operant behavior. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 74(2), 207-227.
• Stapleton, A., & McHugh, L. (2021). Healthy selfing: Theoretically optimal environments for the development of tacting and deictic relational responding. Perspectivas em Análise do Comportamento, 12(1), 125-137.

Contemporary and Advanced

• Kirsten, E. B., & Stewart, I. (2021). Assessing the development of relational framing in young children. The Psychological Record, 72(1), 221-246.
• Belisle, J., & Dixon, M. R. (2020). Relational density theory: Nonlinearity of equivalence relating examined through higher-order volumetric-mass-density. Perspectives on Behavior Science, 43(1), 259-283.
• Cummins, J., Nevejans, M., Colbert, D., & De Houwer, J. (2023). On the structure of relational responding. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 27(1), 16-25.
• Barnes-Holmes, D., Barnes-Holmes, Y., & McEnteggart, C. (2020). Updating RFT (more field than frame) and its implications for process-based therapy. The Psychological Record, 70(1), 605-624.
• Hayes, L. J., & Fryling, M. J. (2019). Functional and descriptive contextualism. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 14(1), 119-126.
• Foody, M., Barnes-Holmes, Y., Barnes-Holmes, D., Törneke, N., Luciano, C., Stewart, I., & McEnteggart, C. (2014). RFT for clinical use: The example of metaphor. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 3(4), 305-313.
• Delabie, M., Cummins, J., Finn, M., & De Houwer, J. (2022). Differential Crel and Cfunc acquisition through stimulus pairing. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 24(1), 112-119.
• Mulhern, T., Stewart, I., & McElwee, J. (2018). Facilitating relational framing of classification in young children. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 8(1), 55-68.
• Kirsten, E. B., Stewart, I., & McElwee, J. (2022). Testing and training analogical relational responding in children with and without autism. The Psychological Record, 72(1), 561-583.
• Stewart, I., Barnes‐Holmes, D., Roche, B., & Smeets, P. M. (2002). A functional‐analytic model of analogy: A relational frame analysis. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 78(3), 375-396. 

General Theory Books on RFT and Contextual Behavior Science

• Villatte, M., Villatte, J. L., & Hayes, S. C. (2019). Mastering the clinical conversation: Language as intervention. New York: The Guilford Press.
• Dahl, J., Stewart, I., Martell, C., Kaplan, J. (2014) ACT and RFT in Relationships: Helping Clients Deepen Intimacy and Maintain Healthy Commitments Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and Relational Frame Theory.
• Dymond, S., & Roche, B. (Eds.) (2013). Advances in relational frame theory: Research and application. New Harbinger Publications.

• Törneke, N. (2010). Learning RFT: An introduction to relational frame theory and its clinical applications. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, Inc. 

  This book is designed to make RFT accessible to clinicians. This book is extremely readable and helps the reader understand behavioral principles, technical terms within RFT, and how to apply RFT across many different areas.

• Ramnero, J., & Törneke, N. (2008). ABCs of human behavior: Behavioral principles for the practicing clinician. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger & Reno, NV: Context Press.

  The ABCs of Human Behavior offers the practicing clinician a solid and practical introduction to the basics of modern behavioral psychology. The book focuses both on the classical principles of learning as well as more recent developments that explain language and cognition in behavioral and contextual terms. These principles are not just discussed in the abstract—rather the book shows how the principles of learning apply in a clinical context. Practical and easy to read, the book walks you through both common sense and clinical examples that will help you use behavioral principles to observe, explain, and influence behavior in a therapeutic setting.

• Hayes, S. C., Barnes-Holmes, D., & Roche, B. (Eds.). (2001). Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian account of human language and cognition. New York: Plenum Press.

  This book may be one of the most difficult to read, but it is also the most thorough account of RFT principles and we highly recommend reading it (at some point) to gain a thorough and working understanding of RFT. Suggestion: do the RFT tutorial first. Read chapters 1 to 8, not stopping when you do not understand. Then pause and re-read Chapter 8. Then re-read the whole book and now you can stop and try to figure out what you do not understand. Don't worry. You will survive it.

• Hayes, S. C. (Ed.). (1989/2004). Rule governed behavior: Cognition, contingencies, and instructional control. New York: Plenum / reprinted in 2004 by Context Press.

  One of the first full-length presentations of the ACT / RFT model is in three chapters in this book on the topic. This book is now available in paperback from Context Press.

Special Issues

Conceptual Developments in Relational Frame Theory: Research and Practice. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science.

Videos

• Free Videos: Learning About and Applying RFT
• RFT Videos (available for ACBS members only)

A number of academic training programs provide some measure of training in RFT. Go to Research Labs and click on a program or school's name to learn more about it.

ACBS Members: If you are a faculty member in an academic program that provides training in RFT, you can list your program clicking on the "research labs" link above and then "add child page" at the bottom of that page.