RFT Study Group for Beginners

PLEASE NOTE: This study group is not longer running, but we have left the information gathered here for your perusal. You may find the information in these pages of some use to you. Also, you may consider starting your own study group by asking colleagues and others on the listservs of their interests and then using these pages or asking ACBS staff to help you update them for your current purposes.

This is a place for people who are perhaps not behaviourally trained to learn RFT. We are primarily a group of clinicians and others who have been drawn to RFT through our exposure to ACT. Together, with each other's help, we are walking through the RFT book chapter by chapter and discussing both our understandings and our struggles. Please join in if you like.

Beginning June 2006, our plan is to read one chapter a month, commenting on it as we go. We are particularly open to people who may know more than we do. So if you read something here that seems as if we're barking up the wrong conceptual tree, please, don't hold back. For those who are participating, let's try to remember that the only stupid question is the one not asked.

Guidelines for Posting/Contributing

There are two basic ways to contribute to our ongoing discussion: by adding child pages or by adding comments. The differences between these are described below.

Child Pages
Child pages are used to create entirely new web pages that are connected to a "parent" page. For example, this page that you're reading is a child page of the "About RFT" page (likewise, the "About RFT" page is the "parent page" of this page). "RFT Book Summary & Discussion" is a child page of this page. You can add a child page to any existing page by clicking on the "add child page" link at the bottom of the page. When you add a child page, several things happen:

  1. A new web page is created with whatever title and content you give it

  2. A link to your new page will be listed at the bottom of the parent page (like the link to "RFT Book Summary & Discussion" seen at the bottom of this page)
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So when should use add a child page? When you are contributing a new summary or question or discussion point. If you are just responding to something someone else has already posted, you should add a comment to their page (see below). For example, if you wanted to add a summary of Chapter 4 of the RFT book, you would go to the Chapter 4 page (RFT > About RFT > RFT Study Group for Beginners > RFT Book & Discussion > Chapter 4) and then click on the "add child page" link at the bottom of that page. A link to your summary page would then appear at the bottom of the Chapter 4 page and below Chapter 4 in the hierarchical menu on the left.

Comments
Unlike a child page, a comment is not a new web page. It is simply a comment added to the bottom of an existing page. Each page can have an unlimited number of comments, and users can reply to existing comments. In this way, every page can be like a whole discussion board with a primary post (the "child page" that has been added) and a discussion listed below it that consists of a series of comments.

If you are just responding to something someone else has already posted, you should probably just add a comment to the page by clicking on the "add new comment" link at the bottom of that page. If you are responding to an existing comment, you can click on the "reply" link listed in the comment itself.

Happy commenting, child paging, discussing, and learning!

RFT Book Summary & Discussion

This section is for individuals to offer their summaries, questions, and comments about the RFT book.

Chapter 1

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 1 of the RFT book.

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1.3.1 Rule governed behaviour

What's hardest for me in all of this is learning the language. It's very precise, and not intuitive for me. Okay, enough whining.
Questions:

1. Autoclitic frames?
Autoclitic: a unit of verbal behaviour that depends on other verbal behaviour for its occurrence and that modifies the effects of that behaviour on the listener. (Catania)
Ex:if-then?
So in Skinner's quote on pg 15 he's pointing to relational framing as a behaviour without explicitly delineating it?

2. Language hypothesis-the idea that differences between instructed and uninstructed performances could be accounted for by human language.
...the behaviour is verbal in Skinner's approach because a specially conditioned listener mediates reinforcement of this behaviour. (p.16)
I'm still struggling with this. So, for Skinner, if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, it doesn't make a sound?
Another question: For Skinner, can the listener and the speaker be the same person?

How can listening not be verbal? "The role of the listener in any verbal episode was thus "not necessarily verbal in any special sense.""
I think I understand the unworkability of this definition, I just want to understand Skinner's conceptualization.
Please don't tell me I have to read Verbal Behaviour.

I'm not quite understanding Skinner's dilemma regarding a functional definition of "specifying". He cannot refer to reference. I understand that, but am not getting the inability to refer to verbal behaviour. Is this why? "(Skinner)did not distinguish between verbal rules and regularities observed in other complex antecedents." p17

thanks
Joanne

questions on 1.1.3 and 1.2.1

Okay, help. Can someone give me a real life example that will help me distinguish a mand from a tact?
Tact: A verbal operant in which a response (from the person emitting the operant or from the environment) of a given form is evoked.. by a particular object or event or property of an event of an oject or event."

There is an excellent summary of the core ideas of Verbal Behavior in Kohlenberg and Tsai's 1991 FAP Book. The whole of chapter 3 is about these issues and is very interesting as is the whole book. I copy a few lines from it since they tell it much better than I could :

A tact is defined as a verbal response that is under the precise control of discriminative stimuli, and that is reinforced by generalized secondary reinforcers. For example, if you are shown a red ball and asked, "What is this?" and you say "A red ball," you would be tacting because the form of your response ("red ball") is controlled by the object and is reinforced by a conditioned generalized reinforcer such as "uh-huh," "right" or "thank you," or any of hundreds of reactions that indicate you were understood. Notice that the contingency or reinforcer is borad and general, whereas the prior discriminative stimulus (Sd) is specific. The tact is thus brought about by the presence of a particular stimulus (e.g., a red ball) and an audience (the therapist or parent). Tacts, in this sense, are similar to the notion of labels or names ( p.54)

1.1.3 Skinner's Approach p9
Mand: A verbal operant in which the response, (whose? the person emitting the operant or the environment?) is reinforced by a characteristic consequence and is therefore under the functional control of relevant conditions of deprivation or aversive stimulation.

Stil from the FAP book : Mands are the speech involved in demands, commands, requests, and questions. A mand is behavior with the following characteristics: (1) it occurs because it was followed by a particular reinforcer, (2) its strength varies with the relevant deprivation or aversive stimulation, and (3) it appears under a very broad range of discriminative stimuli. Thus, if you were to say, "I would like some water" because you were thirsty, this would be a mand because it would be reinforced by a very specific reinforcer - someone hearing you and giving you water or showing you were to get some. Your "I want some water" response would not be reinforced by a generalized secondary reinforcer such as someone saying "That's right," or "Thanks for sharing that with me," or "I understand what you said". It's strength would also vary with how water deprived you were. Your mand for water can occur in almost any setting where you are thirsty and there is another person who can hear you. (p.56)

1.2.1 The definition of verbal behavior is not functional.p12

I'm not sure I understand this sentence in the last PP on the page
The behavior is not superstitious: the contingency is non arbitrary and is produced by the rat's behaviour.

Hope this is correct behavioralese : If you give arbitrary reinforcement to a pigeon, the frequency of the behavior closely preceding the reinforcement (it could be odd !) will rise. Thus, the probability that this particular behavior will occur short before the next instance of arbitrary reinforcement will rise, so it will be reinforced again and so on. As a final result, the pigeon will in the end emit this particular behavior with a high frequency, although the behavior in itself has no effect whatsoever on the reinforcing contingency. Which is not the case in the described example : As I understand it, by pressing the lever, the rat slightly shakes the feedbag and as a result, every five presses in average, a food pellet is jarred loose. This reinforcement is not arbitrary and is produced by the rat's behavior.

Here's another one on p13.
...Leighland cited Skinners ...theorising that the restricted contingencies required for abstraction ( a highly precise form of stimulus control) could only arise from an extensive history of social mediation.
The whole next paragraph just compounds the murk.

I find it difficult too. Maybe the important thing is to understand the critic made to Skinner's VB : Making appeal to the history of the listener in order to understand the behavior of the speaker is said to be a «conceptual error» making the design of fruitful experimental strategies extraordinarily difficult.

Okay enough for now. My mind is acting up.
Joanne

So does mine
Philippe

Chapter 2

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 2 of the RFT book.

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C func equation, page 33

I have read and reread (and reread again!) chapter 2 over the past month, and find it much denser even than chapter 1. The concept I get hung up on over and over is the notion of arbitrary applicability (AA). While I know that AA is defined as a relationship that depends on social whim or consensus instead of formal characteristics of the stimulus, I think I’m missing the implications.

If we look at the equation for Cfunc as expressed on page 33, there’s a sentence that follows that says: “[w]e can say it this way: given arbitrarily applicable stimulus relations between A, B, and C, and given a context that actualizes the transformation of a given function of A, the functions of B and C will be modified in terms of the underlying relations between A, B, and C.”

I’d like to substitute examples for “A, B, and C”—could someone tell me if I’m on the right track with this?
An example of an actualizing context would be people talking to each other, having a conversation.
In that context, A might be a banana (the fruit itself, not the word).
One person could say, “Have you ever noticed how her nose [B, in my example?] looks like a banana [the oral word for the fruit, C in my example?]?”
Now, this comparison relies on both people’s previous experience with bananas. If the person responded “What’s a banana?” the first person would have to whip out a banana, or at least a picture of a banana, for purposes of comparison.
If this is right so far, one question would be, does one of the 3 items in the relation have to be something with material existence, not “just” a word? I think the answer to this is “no” because what if my characters were talking about something abstract?

So . . .
One person might say, “Love [A] is blind [B].”
Would C in this example be the quality of not being sighted, of blindness?
I’m getting tangled up here. Help!

Pg 30 mutual entailment and transformation / transfer of stimulus function

On page 30, first full paragraph, there is a description of a natural language event--someone names a ball to a child. It's being used to illustrate mutual entailment. But it seems that the last sentence "the r response in other words, will involve responding to the sound "ball" in terms of the previously experienced functions of actual balls." So that seems to be a description of the transfer of stimulus functions.

Is transfer of stimulus function a more precise term than transformation of stimulus function.
Is transfer of stimulus function a subset of transformation of stimulus function that applies with frames of coordination or is it a different thing altogether?
Joanne Steinwachs
Leslie Telfer

Some questions

Hi all,

Here are some questions I have after reading chapter 2.

1. In paragraph 2.1.1 (page 22/24) is explained what overarching purely functional operants are. Could one say that 'avoidance' is an overarching purely functional operant?

2. Does anyone know what 'self-discrimination functions' are? They are mentioned on page 32 in a paragraph about tranformation of stimulusfunctions (2.2.3)as an example of stimulusfunctions that have been shown to transfer.
As a whole, I still find the concept of stimulusfunctions very difficult to grasp. What I find especially difficult is to find good examples and to specify stimulusfunctions that are involved when looking at a real life example. Anyone who can help out here with examples?

3. In paragraph 2.4 families of relational frames are summed up (page 35-39). If I get it right the phrase: 'snakes are dangerous' means NOT that the snakes are in a relation of coordination, which should be understood as equivalence, but in a relation of hierarchie, like the phrase: John is an man. Snakes are a part of dangerous stuff. Is this right?

4. Am I right that stimulusfunctions can be relata?

Jacqueline

Chapter 3

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Chapter 4

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 4 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 5

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 5 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 6

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 6 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 7

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 7 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 8

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 8 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 9

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 9 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 10

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 10 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 11

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 11 of the RFT book.

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Happy commenting, child paging, discussing, and learning!

Chapter 12

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 12 of the RFT book.

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Chapter 13

This page is for summaries, discussions, and questions about Chapter 13 of the RFT book.

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Other Helpful Readings

Hi all,
I suggest that we use this page to post other readings so people don't have to dig through posts to find them. If it's not too much trouble, when you come across something, please post it here as well as in your original post. I'm thinking that all that we post here will be read by newcomers to ACT/RFT and I'd like to make it as easy as possible for them. It would also be useful if you'd give a few sentences on why you found it useful and what you found it useful for.

So far we've got:
Kohlenberg and Tsai (1991)
Blackledge articles, (probably found on website) Sandra? Do you know where?
Hayes, Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life
Hayes et al, Practical Guide to ACT
The RFT tutorial

Any others?

Thanks,
Joanne

Learning BA to understand RFT

Hi all,
For those of us who aren't behaviourally trained, I've been working through this Resources in Behavior Analysis page from the Cambridge Center. It's wonderful:

http://www.behavior.org/behavior/index.cfm?page=http%3A//www.behavior.org/behavior/behavior_analysis_resources.cfm

It's on the website, but I thought I'd put it here. The Skinner program on BA is helping me a lot with basic terminology.
Joanne Steinwachs