RFT Study Group for Beginners

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)
  3. A link to your new page will appear in the menu hierarchy on the left side of the screen (like the link to "RFT Book Summary & Discussion" seen on the left side of the screen below "RFT Study Group for Beginners"

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!

Comments

lhamilton's picture

rft study group

is this group still happening? Linda

jsteinwachs's picture

RFT study group

Hi Linda,
This group kind of petered out, but I'd be up for starting again, after the behavioral study group on the list serve gets going.
Joanne

Newbie

Hi - I second Janet's request for help. I'm new to ACT/RFT and the notion of on-line discussion groups. What do I do next?

Thanks - Daniel

jsteinwachs's picture

Newbie

Hi Daniel,
This is what I'd do: Get the book Relational Frame Theory: A Post Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition, by Hayes, Barnes-Holmes and Roche. Begin reading. Post bewildered and incoherent pleas for help. Read similar posts by others. Stagger around intellectually until you see some light. Read posts by others who have also seen a glimmer. Rejoice. Lose the light. Repeat.

Okay. Now to be serious. Or sort of seriouser. If you're an absolute virgin to ACT/RFT read the 1999 book and look at the discussion that's posted on the website about that one. Read the RFT book a couple of times. I like Steve's Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life workbook for an overview. I also like the first three chapters in the Practical Guide. It gives a nice framework and includes the hexaflex model. Go on the listserve and ask questions. Ask questions here about RFT. Feel overwhelmed yet?

So that's my idea about getting into ACT/RFT. There's a lot out there and the learning curve is steep, but my experience is that there are MANY people who want to help and are generous with their time and attention. This is an open and caring community.

Hope this is useful to you.
Does anyone else have other ideas for newbies?

Joanne

Newbie

Daniel,

I would suggest going through the tutorial that Eric Fox developed. Click on "RFT Tutorial". It's an excellent introduction to RFT concepts.

John

mkleen's picture

Newbie

Hi!

Are people reading and discussing already? I expected so many reactions here (or am I looking at the wrong place?)...

Greetz
Marco

sgeorgescu's picture

Hey.... wait for meeee!

Hello everyone,

I posted something a little while ago.... it seems to have disappeared. Good to see you all - all these people who will be speaking this strange language. It's a relief to have a community.

As for the newbies; I echo going through the tutorial.... a few times if you have to- it's beautifully set up. You also may want to read some of the Blackledge articles (2 that I know of)... if references are hard to come by, backchannel me & I'll send mine along (I'm imagining that they are ref.'d on this site somewhere) - they are usually written in "english" & easier to get your brain around....

ok, i'll go read now & see if what I undelined the 1st time around still makes sense.....

For those of you that I know & it's good to see you again.

Sandra

RFT Learner's Group I guess ...

I will have to dig out that intimidating book again and struggle through the first chapter. I think a big part of this for me will be, as someone already mentioned, learning exactly what some of these terms mean (mand, track, ply, a, and, the - okay part of that is just kidding), as the language is somewhat daunting.
mk

mkleen's picture

Language

Hi!

Totally agree with you, Kirkeberg (I spent hours to figure out what the word 'the' really meant, :-) ). I think the book is intimitating enough by its content, but it's even more difficult if you have to translate it....
When's the "RFT for Idiots" comming out? :-)

-M.

Language

Forgive me if this is redundant or overly basic, but since others also seem to be struggling with the language, and I know not everyone has the Catania book, I'm posting verbatim the glossary definitions of tact and mand. Those particular terms were stumbling blocks for me in Chapter 1.

Tact: a verbal discriminative response (as when the verbal response apple in the presence of an apple is said to tact the apple). The tact captures stimulus control as it enters into verbal behavior. The tact relation includes only responses in the presence or shortly after a stimulus, so it isn't equivalent to naming or reference.

Mand: a verbal response that specifies its reinforcer. In human verbal behavior, manding is usually a higher-order class, in the sense that a newly-acquired tact can be incorporated into a novel mand (as when a child asks for a toy on learning its name).

Catania, A. (1998). Learning, Fourth Edition. Simon & Schuster, NJ. PP. 413 and 396.

Hope helpful.

Chapter 1

Hi,

IMHO the skinnerian terms tacts, mands, autoclitics, etc. are not the real issue for RFT. I didn't read Verbal Behavior, nor am I acquainted with Kantor's interbehaviorism. Those are historical antecendents, no more, no less. There's no need to try to understand them. I think it's more fruitfull to focus on modern behavior analysis, stimulus equivalence, rule-governed behavior and RFT an sich.
What seems important to me in this first ch, is that behavior analysis got stuck on verbal behavior and cognition. There where attempts to deal with them, but those attempts were rather unsuccesfull.
I do have questions on rule-governance and stimulus equivalence (e.g. why didn't Sidman extend his approach?) but these are better treated in ch 2, I guess.
Is Williard Day's approach still being used? And Salzinger's (I think he reacted on RFT, but I haven't read his reaction yet)?

Francis

linda's picture

RFT Learner's Group

Great idea, I am on my third reading of the book and find some of the concepts a struggle so would really love to have someone to discuss them with.
Linda.

Joel Guarna's picture

Sounds good. I'm looking

Sounds good. I'm looking forward to starting.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joel Guarna, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
joel@whitepinepsych.com
www.whitepinepsych.com

16 Fifth Street, Dover, NH 03820; Ph:603-749-4462x23
25 Middle Street, Portland, ME 04101; Ph:207

ramiro's picture

Is this the book?

I understand you are going to read and comment this book:

"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."

Is that correct?

Please, confirm it to me, so I will ask the book to Amazon.com in order to engage in the group.

I think it is a great idea.

Ramiro

Jacqueline A-Tjak's picture

One two three go!

So, tomorrow it is the first of june. This means we are going to read chapter one, don't we? And Ramiro: This is the book.
Let's go!

Jacqueline

I posted this as a child page, don'think that was the right move, so I try again, now as reply

jsteinwachs's picture

Beginning and expanding

Hi,
I just came back from Oxford from Kelly Wilson's workshops, and two of his students are interested in becoming mentors to us. I'm waiting to hear from them. Kate Kellum is one of them, and she's a gifted behaviour analyst who's willing to help people like us learn the basics of behaviour analysis, which Kelly believes is necessary to understand RFT. So she and Catherine Adams will be in touch with me, and will post to the site. Until that happens, we'll just be reading the first chapter in the RFT book, asking questions, posting our thoughts and talking with each other about it. One chapter a month, until we're done.
For a hands on way to learn BA principles, Kate recommends clicker training a pet. (Really!) She suggested this book http://clickerpets.stores.yahoo.net/getstarclict3.html and I found a game for people who aren't interested in clicker training an animal here: http://clickerpets.stores.yahoo.net/youdontsay.html
Joanne

I also posted this as a child page and reply is the way to go.

Philippe Vuille's picture

Yes !

Hi Joanne and all !

I'll be happy to join the group. Having no pet to click-train, I put my hands on Sniffy, the virtual rat, a computer program emulating a Skinner's box. Watson and Tharp's «Self-Directed Behavior : Self-Modification for Personal Adjustment» gave me hints to ways of click-training myself (work still in progress...). Holland and Skinner's «The Analysis of Behavior: A Program for Self-Instruction» is a fine piece of programmed learning. It can be found used pretty cheap, prefer a copy with the answers not filled in. I sometimes had to open Catania's book on learning, specially to overcome one of the first great obstacles I remember from my first reading of the RFT book (which I'll have to overcome once again) : The concept of an overarching, purely functional operant. Ooops that's already chapter 2. Chapter 1 scares me a little because it gives such a concentrated account of a very broad body of difficult litterature. I'll do my best to reread it these following days.

Thank you all for being in (I wouldn't do it alone and I believe it's going to be useful).

Philippe

dennistirchphd's picture

Excited to join

I'm excited to join this group, as it will be a forum to learn beyond the pages.
I'll try to use the clicker training as an experiential man/pooch exercise, but hold
out little hope for affecting the behavior of my freewheeling self-directed Cockerpoo.
He has no trouble with avoiding experience and never attempts any control! Worth a try.
Meanwhile, I'd love to dig deeper into RFT!

May all beings attain happiness

DT

Stumbling Blocks

One of the stumbling blocks for me in chapter one is the tact/mand (autoclitic--which doesn't mean what I might think it would!, etc) terminology. The Catania book has a glossary with definitions of these terms, as well as chapters giving multiple examples. I can't say it clears it up completely for me, but I try to remind myself that these terms are abstracting processes that I'm already familiar with as a language-able human: a new way of cutting the pie, so to speak. If other people are struggling with the behavioral terminology related to verbal behavior as I am, what are you finding helpful?

PeterHeuts's picture

joining in

Hi,
This is a good idea!
I will join in looking forward to fruitful discussions, explanations, suggestions and fun.

Best wishes for you all,
Peter.

mmm

Hi this is Janet
i am not sure how to work this process ... but i know i want to join...
help

John Moore's picture

RFT Learner's group

I'm in.

DJ Moran's picture

The RFT study group is underway

I think this is a nice idea. The ACT book group from about 1.5 years ago seemed to be a succcess, and I bet this will be cool, too.

The neat thing about the RFT book is it is broken down into very easy to find headings...

I think we might want to do some more invitations to other people while we do this group... the more the (perhaps) merrier.

DJ

Daniel J. Moran, Ph.D., BCBA
TheMPInstitute@comcast.net
815-735-0732