Association for Contextual Behavioral Science

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]