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Bidirectional naming (BiN) as a verbal developmental cusp and derived relational responding as a phenomenon have been used to explain the accelerated rate in word learning that occurs within the second to third year of life; however, there has been limited research on how these repertoires may be related. In the first of two descriptive studies, we evaluated the relation between degrees of BiN and scores on tests of derived relational responding. Study I involved 31 preschool students with and without diagnoses with whom we tested the presence and strength of relations among BiN and other arbitrary and nonarbitrary relations that were mutually and combinatorially entailed. Data from the first study showed a strong significant correlation between participants’ degrees of BiN and their scores on tests of derived relations. In the second study we collected additional data on BiN and derived relations in order to compare the mean differences between the establishment of arbitrary auditory–visual and visual–visual relations for 18 preschool students selected from the participants within the first study. This subgroup consisted of six students who demonstrated BiN, six students who demonstrated unidirectional naming (listener only; UniN) and six students who demonstrated no UniN or BiN. There were significant differences for both auditory–visual and visual–visual derived relations based on the students’ degrees of BiN. The results of both studies have implications for the intersection between the verbal developmental cusp of BiN (a derived relation itself) and other derived relational responding.

Relational frame theory (RFT) sees operant acquisition of various patterns of relational framing (frames) as key to linguistic and cognitive development, and it has explored the emergence of a range of psychological phenomena (e.g., analogy, perspective-taking) in these terms. One potentially important advance for RFT research is to obtain more detailed information on the normative development of relational framing in childhood. This was one of the aims of the present study, which sought to measure relational responding of various types and at various levels of complexity in young children across a range of ages. A second aim of the study was to focus in particular on analogy, or the relating of relations, as one particularly important pattern of relational responding. The present study examined a range of frames including coordination, comparison, opposition, temporality, and hierarchy at a number of different levels of complexity (nonarbitrary relating, nonarbitrary relating of relations, arbitrarily applicable relating, and arbitrarily applicable relating of relations) in young children ranging in age from 3 to 7. Performance overall as well as under various subheadings was correlated with both age and intellectual ability. Outcomes and their implications are discussed.

Despite systematic demonstrations of the effectiveness of the respondent-type procedure in producing relational responding, matching-to-sample continues to be the predominant approach for studying equivalence class formation. The length of exposure to stimulus pairings during respondent-type training, and repeated alternation of blocks of training and testing are factors that seem to undermine the practicality and the perceived effectiveness of the procedure. Further, the presentation of stimulus pairs without the simultaneous presence of nonclass members may be said to lack the complexity of the matching-to-sample stimulus arrangement. The present study evaluates the efficiency of a respondent matching-to-sample arrangement after exposing participants to a reduced number of training trials per baseline relation. Probes were added at the end of each block of training trials to verify the strength of S–S relations while keeping the number of acquisition trials to a minimum. At least half of the participants responded correctly to all probe trials per baseline relation after only one exposure, and all participants performed accurately in tests of derived relations. Procedural components of S–S training such as intermixing probes during training and arranging an environment-elicited orientation response towards the relevant stimuli, are discussed as key elements of efficient respondent equivalence training procedures.

Rule-governed behavior and derived relational responding have both been identified as important variables in human learning. Recent developments in the relational frame theory (RFT) have outlined a number of key variables of potential importance when analyzing the dynamics involved in derived relational responding. Recent research has explored the impact of one of these variables, level of derivation, on persistent rule-following and implicated another, coherence, as possibly important. However, no research to date has examined the impact of coherence on persistent rule-following directly. Across two experiments, coherence was manipulated through the systematic use of performance feedback, and its impact was examined on persistent rule-following. A training procedure based on the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP) was used to establish novel combinatorially entailed relations that manipulated the feedback provided on the trained relations (A-B and B-C) in Experiment 1, and on the untrained, derived relations (A-C) in Experiment 2. One of these relations was then inserted into the rule for responding on a subsequent contingency-switching match-to-sample (MTS) task to assess rule persistence. While no significant differences were found in Experiment 1, the provision or non-provision of feedback had a significant differential impact on rule-persistence in Experiment 2. Specifically, participants in the Feedback group resurged back to the original rule for significantly more responses after demonstrating contingency-sensitive responding than did the No-Feedback group, after the contingency reversal. The results highlight the subtle complexities that appear to be involved in persistent rule-following in the face of reversed reinforcement contingencies.

Kavanagh et al. (2020) aimed to provide a comprehensive review of the perspective taking literature, including how the topic has been addressed by researchers of relational frame theory (RFT; Hayes et al., 2001). As a part of that effort, mention was made of the relational triangulation (RT) framework of RFT (Guinther, 2017, 2018), though the primary focus was appropriately on the deictic relational frame (DRF) framework of RFT (Barnes-Holmes et al., 2001), representing a larger body of established literature and the dominant RFT treatment of perspective taking. Unfortunately, the review’s brief summation of the RT framework and Guinther’s (2017, 2018) positions on the DRF framework were inaccurate, warranting correction in the present open letter. To begin, Kavanagh et al. (2020) conflated frameworks with methodologies when comparing the DRF and RT frameworks. Moreover, they misidentified the RT framework as being a mental rotation model, and they did not provide a rationale for reporting Guinther’s (2018) empirical findings differently than how they were reported in the source material. Finally, the addressed authors mischaracterized Guinther’s (2017, 2018) conclusions regarding the precision and utility of the DRF and RT frameworks.

Identifying the processes by which environmental stimuli can come to influence drug use is important for developing more efficacious interventions. This study investigated derived relational responding and the transfer of differential conditioned effects of environmental stimuli paired with “smoked” cocaine in accordance with the relations of symmetry, transitivity, and equivalence using Heart Rate as the measure of conditioning among 12 adults with significant histories of cocaine use. Match-to-sample (MTS) procedures were used to test for emergent relations among two four-member stimulus groupings. One member of a group was then paired with 25 -mg of smoked cocaine and one member of the other group was paired with 0 -mg of smoked cocaine. Ten participants completed the MTS protocol: four participants demonstrated two four-member equivalence classes, three participants demonstrated two three-member equivalence classes, and two participants demonstrated symmetry only. One participant demonstrated no derived relations. Differential respondent elicited changes in HR was demonstrated in the presence of stimuli paired with smoked cocaine among four of the six participants completing the conditioning phase; all four of the participants demonstrated a bidirectional transfer of these functions in accordance with symmetry. Transfer was not reliably demonstrated in accordance with transitive or equivalence relations. The results suggest that respondent elicitation in the context of drug use may be a function of both direct conditioning and derived relational processes. These findings have implications for studying and understanding the processes by which stimuli in the natural ecology can set the occasion for cocaine use and developing cocaine use disorder.

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.

In three experiments, match‐to‐sample procedures were used with undergraduates to establish arbitrary relational functions for three visual stimuli. In the presence of samples A, B, and C, participants were trained to select the smallest, middle, and largest member, respectively, of a series of three‐comparison arrays. In Experiment 1, the B (choose middle) stimulus was then used to train a steady rate of keyboard pressing before the A (choose smallest) and the C (choose largest) stimuli were presented. Participants pressed slower to A and faster to C than to B. Then B was paired with mild shock in a Pavlovian procedure with skin conductance change as the dependent variable. When presented with A and C, 6 of 8 experimental participants showed smaller skin conductance changes to A and larger skin conductance changes to C than to B. In Experiment 2, A was then used as a sample in a match‐to‐sample procedure to establish an arbitrary size ranking among four same‐sized colored circle comparisons. One of the middle circles was then used to establish a steady rate of pressing before the other circles were presented. Five of 6 participants responded slower to the “smaller” circle and faster to the “larger” circle than they did to the “middle” circle. In Experiment 3, A, B, and C were then presented on a series of test trials requiring participants to pick the comparison that was less than, greater than, or equal to the sample. Novel stimuli were included on some trials. Results indicated that the relational training procedures produced derived relations among the stimuli used in training and that these allowed correct inferences of relative size ranking among novel stimuli.

The present study evaluated the use of computerized equivalence-based instruction (EBI) to teach classes representing schedules of reinforcement to staff members. Four, 5-member classes representing fixed ratio, fixed interval, variable ratio, and variable interval schedules of reinforcement were taught. The participants were 16 staff members between the ages of 22 and 30 years of age that were employed at a private school for individuals with autism. Participants were randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group. A pretest-training-posttest-maintenance design was used to evaluate the effects of EBI on participants’ performance during both a computer-based test and a written multiple-choice test. Participants in the control group were only exposed to pretest and posttests. All participants in the experimental group acquired the baseline trained relations during match-to-sample instruction. Test scores improved from pretest to posttest and derived (untrained) relations emerged across all participants in the experimental group following training but did not change for the participants in the control group. In addition, participants maintained the learned relations one week after EBI was completed. The present study demonstrated that EBI is an effective teaching procedure to teach schedules of reinforcement to staff members in the field of applied behavior analysis.

The current study evaluated the effectiveness of a successive matching-to-sample (S-MTS) procedure with a go/no-go preparation to establish three 3-member classes of visual stimuli with 24 undergraduate college students. At the start of each trial, participants touched a sample stimulus after which a comparison immediately appeared in the same location on the screen. Then, depending on the relation between sample and comparison, participants were required to either touch the comparison (i.e., go) or to refrain from touching it (i.e., no-go). The comparison remained on the screen for 8 s independent of participants’ responses. Following training of baseline relations (AB/BC), responses to untrained relations (i.e., BA/CB and AC/CA) were assessed. Overall, 22 out of 24 participants met emergence criterion on AC/CA tests, with reaction times to comparisons below 5 s indicating that S-MTS may be a viable alternative to traditional MTS to establish equivalence classes.