Guinther, Vlachodimos & Stewart, 2022

The present article exhibits the use of a linguistic multiple-choice questionnaire format for evoking relational triangulation performances while examining whether between-subject variability in such performances might be adequate to relate to variability in other perspective-taking performances and proclivities. Verbally competent adults (N = 32) were administered a pilot nine-item linguistic relational triangulation questionnaire (RTQ-MST9) with three three-item subscales pertaining to triangulations of material, spatial, and temporal perspectives. Nonlinguistic behavioral measures of perspective-taking training fluency and derivation performances were drawn from an operant, match-to-sample (MTS), visuospatial relational triangulation perspective-taking protocol (RT-PTP). Participants also completed the linguistic Barnes-Holmes Perspective Taking Protocol (BH-PTP) to evoke verbal perspective taking performances in terms of deictic relational framing. Participants furthermore completed the linguistic Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI), a widely used self-report measure of general perspective taking proclivities. Whereas the material subscale of the RTQ-MST9 did not evidence associations in correlational analyses, the spatial and temporal subscales were associated with certain aspects of perspective taking on the RT-PTP, BH-PTP, and IRI. The number of observed significant correlations was reliably above what would be expected on the basis of chance alone. However, it must be cautioned that the particular correlational results of this study should be held lightly as the present sample size is limited and there were no corrections for familywise error rate. Instead, the findings suggest in general terms that linguistic questionnaires of relational triangulation may be a viable methodology for evoking and measuring variable performances in verbal perspective taking in future studies.