International Journal of Psychology, 2015

DOI: 10.1002/ijop.12184

The fruits of a functional approach for psychological

science
Ian Stewart
School of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland

he current paper introduces relational frame theory (RFT) as a functional contextual approach to complex human
behaviour and examines how this theory has contributed to our understanding of several key phenomena in
psychological science. I will first briefly outline the philosophical foundation of RFT and then examine its conceptual basis
and core concepts. Thereafter, I provide an overview of the empirical findings and applications that RFT has stimulated
in a number of key domains such as language development, linguistic generativity, rule-following, analogical reasoning,
intelligence, theory of mind, psychopathology and implicit cognition.
Keywords: Functional; Relational frame theory; Psychology; Language; Cognition.

The current paper introduces relational frame theory

(RFT) as a functional contextual approach to the study
of complex human behaviour and examines its application in a number of areas in psychological science. The
philosophical foundation upon which RFT is built will
first be discussed (given that it differs markedly from
that typically seen elsewhere in psychological science).
Thereafter, I will highlight the main assumptions at the
core of this theory and provide a brief snapshot of how
RFT has transformed our basic (functional) understanding of human language and cognition. Over the past two
decades, RFT has offered new insight into, and applications in, a number of areas in psychological science
including linguistic generativity, rule-following, analogical reasoning, intelligence, theory of mind (ToM), psychopathology and implicit cognition. In what follows I
aim to provide the reader with just a thin slice of this ongoing research programme (for a more detailed treatment
see Dymond & Roche, 2013; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, &
Roche, 2001; Hughes & Barnes-Holmes, in press-a, in
press-b).
PHILOSOPHICAL BACKGROUND
As we have seen elsewhere in this special issue, cognitive
and functionally orientated researchers often approach the
study of complex human behaviour in two very different
ways, each with its own assumptions, goals and values

(see De Houwer, 2011). Researchers operating at the mental level of analysis typically assume that basic and complex human behaviour is mediated by mental mechanisms
and that the key goal of psychology involves the identification of those mechanisms and the conditions under
which they operate (so as to facilitate the prediction of the
phenomenon of interest). However, researchers operating
at the functional level of analysis typically explain human
behaviour as the causal product of (past and present)
environmental variables and assume that the key goal of
psychology is the identification of these variables so as
to allow both prediction of and influence over human
behaviour.
This emphasis on achieving influence over behaviour
is at the very core of the functional (contextual) approach.
Analyses at the mental level of analysis certainly allow
for, but do not necessarily require, that the researcher
achieve influence over behaviour. As such, these
approaches tend to neglect environmental variables
as causes of behaviour and instead to implicate exclusively mental phenomena; that is, they are mentalistic
(see Hayes & Brownstein, 1986). In contrast, from a
functional point of view, all activity on the part of the
organism is conceived of as behaviour, whether it is
behaviour that is publically observable to others (e.g.
running, shouting and smiling) or private and in principle only observable by the organism themselves (e.g.
thinking, feeling and remembering). When viewed in

Correspondence should be addressed to Ian Stewart, School of Psychology, National University of Ireland, Galway, Ireland. (E-mail:
ian.stewart@nuigalway.ie).

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STEWART

this way, mentalistic explanations are seen as analyses

that use one pattern of behaviour to explain another
pattern of behaviour (e.g. using fear to explain avoidance). Such explanations are entirely satisfactory if ones
scientific goal is to achieve prediction. However, because
behaviour itself cannot be immediately manipulated1 ,
such analyses are not satisfactory if ones scientific goal
is to achieve influence over responding. To achieve both
prediction-and-influence, the researcher must be able
to specify the relation between the environment and
the behaviour, thus specifying variables that might, at
least in principle, be manipulated so as to influence
responding. For instance, drawing on the example of
fear and avoidance, contextual variables affecting either
fear (e.g. presence of a phobic object such as a spider),
a persons response to fear (e.g. presence of feedback
regarding their response) or the relation between them
(e.g. salience of cultural norms suggesting that avoidance
of fearful objects is an appropriate or justifiable reaction)
must be identified in order to allow for the possibility of
influence over responding2 .
This emphasis on the environment necessitates adopting a substantially empirically grounded bottom-up
approach characterised by careful attention to historical
and current contextual variables. This emphasis on environmental3 variables as opposed to unobservable mental
constructs arguably also has the advantages of allowing
for checks on unhelpful theoretical expansion and the
avoidance of philosophical issues such as, for example,
have recently been identified within mainstream cognitive science (De Houwer, 2011). The resulting relative
parsimony and philosophical coherence of the functional approach likely confers additional advantages. For
example, it appears to facilitate scientific communication
due to use of the same basic terminology in explanations
of diverse phenomena, ease of understanding by scientists
and practitioners (i.e. once the terminology is familiar)
and ease of adoption by the latter, all of which further
support theoretical refinement and insight in diverse
domains.
RFT is a theoretical account that is firmly situated
at the functional level of analysis and one that strives
to achieve both prediction-and-influence over complex
human behaviour. Broadly speaking, it is a type of operant
psychology focused specifically on human language and
cognition. Operant psychology analyses the behaviour of
organisms in terms of how they operate on their environment to produce consequences (e.g. reinforcers) that

affect the likelihood of future responding. As a functional approach, operant psychology requires that analysis
should enable influence over behaviour, at least in principle; and as explained previously, because the behaviour
of the responding organism can only be changed via the
manipulation of causal environmental variables to which
the scientist has access, it requires identification of the
latter. Analysis and manipulation of the environment in
terms of antecedents and consequences of behaviour have
enabled functionally orientated researchers to achieve
influence over organismic responding to a degree that
often outstrips other approaches3 . At the same time, however, this success has until recently been confined to only
a limited number of areas of application (e.g. animal training, interventions for developmentally delayed populations and organisational behaviour management) and thus
operant psychology is not currently regarded as a mainstream approach in psychological science. The key reason
for this is the historical failure of this approach to give rise
to an adequate account of the functional processes responsible for human verbal and cognitive abilities, which are
so centrally important to human psychology. RFT has
now emerged as an operant account that does specify
these critical processes, and thus has the potential to allow
unprecedented insight into core domains of human activity with which psychological science is concerned.
The major operant conceptualisation of language prior
to RFT was provided over half a century ago by Skinner (1957) who attempted to define language as a form
of directly trainable operant behaviour that was similar to
the kinds of operants that could be directly trained in other
species. However, a core problem with his account was
that even the most complex forms of operant behaviour
demonstrated by other species lack several important
qualitiesnamely, the symbolic and generative qualities that are central to human language. The failure of
this analysis contributed in part to the historical shift
away from functional analyses of behaviour-environment
interactions and towards accounts interested in the mental mechanics of language and cognition. Researchers
switched their focus to the mental level of analysis and
began postulating hypothetical or computational mechanisms to explain how language was acquired and used.
Yet over the intervening decades, continuing research
within operant psychology has given rise to a purely functional account of language and cognition which specifies that in order to understand these phenomena we

1 The point here is that the scientist cannot immediately affect organismic behaviour; in other words, she does not have immediate access to variables
of this type. In order to have effective influence, she must manipulate variables outside of the organisms behaviour (i.e. in the organisms environment)
to which she does have access, at least in principle, and which her scientific paradigm indicates affect or influence that behaviour.
2 Readers interested in a more thorough treatment of the philosophical basis of the functional approach (and functional contextualism in general) are
encouraged to read Hayes and Brownstein (1986) or Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Wilson (2012).
3 For example, the results of several meta-analyses (e.g. Heyvaart, Mae, Van den Noortgate, Kuppens, & Onghena, 2012) that have collectively
analysed hundreds of studies indicate that applied behaviour-analytic procedures are more effective for reducing problem behaviour of individuals with
intellectual disability (as well as typically developing individuals) than any alternative treatment.

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first need to understand a learned, generalised and contextually controlled type of operant behaviour known
as arbitrarily applicable relational responding (AARR).
This is because the former are argued to be instances of
the latter.
RELATIONAL FRAME THEORY (RFT)
We have known for over a century now that humans and
non-humans can both learn via the direct pairing of stimuli (classical conditioning) or from the consequences of
their actions (operant conditioning). We also know that
an important type of operant involves learning how to
respond relationally, that is, to respond to one event
in terms of another. Many species (including mammals,
birds, fish and insects) can learn to do this based on the
physical properties of the stimuli involved (e.g. selection of an object that is physically similar to, different
from, larger or smaller than a second object). This type
of behaviour is known as non-arbitrarily applicable relational responding (NAARR). However, operant research
over recent decades suggests that typical members of
the human species additionally learn to perform a more
advanced variety of this operant referred to as AARR.
This latter type of relational responding is not primarily
based on the physical properties of related stimuli. Rather,
it is based on contingencies provided by the social community. People come to respond to one event in terms of
another under the control of properties of the environment (contextual cues) that signal how those stimuli
should be related, independent of their formal properties
(hence the term arbitrarily applicable; for more on this,
see Stewart & McElwee, 2009).
To illustrate, imagine that I teach a young child that X
is more than Y and Y is more than Z and thereafter the
child is able to act as if these stimuli are related to one
another in entirely novel ways (e.g. X is more than Z
and Z is less than X). The child is able to do this despite
the fact that (a) the latter relations were never explicitly
taught and (b) the non-arbitrary properties of the stimuli
involved do not support these performances. For instance,
it is not obvious that the stimulus X is physically more
than Z. According to RFT, what is happening here is
that I am presenting the child with a contextual cue (i.e.
more) that, based on multiple exposures to everyday
language interactions in which feedback for responding
appropriately to the correct pattern is provided, has been
gradually established in their learning history as controlling a particular pattern of AARR. Now, when that cue is
presented, that response pattern can be brought to bear on

any arbitrarily chosen set of stimuli no matter what their

physical properties. In the above example, it is brought to
bear on the arbitrary stimuli X, Y and Z.
The example outlined above describes just one type of
AARRnamelyresponding based on a comparative
(more/less) relation. However, RFT argues that humans
can also learn how to relate stimuli in a multitude of other
ways, including based on similarity (or coordination, e.g.
dog is the same as hond), opposition (black is opposite
white), distinction (hot is not the same as cold), hierarchy (a whale is a type of mammal), analogy (A is to B
as C is to D), deixis (I am here and you are there) and
temporality (spring comes before summer) to mention
just a few. A wealth of evidence already accumulated indicates that people can AARR in these various ways and that
AARR is operant behaviour that can be trained up when
weak or absent (see Dymond & Roche, 2013, for a book
length review).
The idea that humans can learn a variety of forms
of abstract relational responding to a degree unrivalled by other species makes AARR an interesting
and research-worthy topic for functionally orientated researchers. However, what elevates it to critical
importancenot just for functional contextualism but
for psychological science more generallyis the now
extensive evidence indicating that this is the basic
functional unit underpinning human language and
cognition4 .
AARR and language
The first empirical demonstration of AARR was provided
by Sidman (1971) who, after training a series of related
conditional discriminations between spoken words,
pictures and printed words in developmentally delayed
individuals (e.g. pick a picture of a fox [B] given the
spoken word Fox [A] and pick the textual stimulus
Fox [C] given the spoken word Fox [A]; see Figure 1,
upper panel) found that they subsequently showed
several additional untrained or derived performances
that conventional operant theory would have not have
predicted (e.g. pick B with C and vice versa) such that
they were now treating particular groups of stimuli (i.e.
A, B and C) as mutually substitutable or equivalent.
Sidman termed this stimulus equivalence. It was an
example of what RFT would term AARR of coordination
(sameness).
Stimulus equivalence became the subject of much
attention due to its apparent link with language. Sidmans (1971) demonstration of this effect involved

4 Within the cognitive tradition, language is often seen as just one faculty of higher cognition; hence, it might appear unnecessary or unusual to
refer to language and cognition as if they were separable phenomena. From the functional contextual point of view, in contrast, language is used
in the broadest sense to mean the ability to symbolise and relate objects and events. As such, all forms of higher cognition are enabled by this ability
and thus within this context it is the word cognition that is, strictly speaking, logically unnecessary. Nevertheless, the term language and cognition
is often used as a means of emphasising the breadth of abilities being referred to.

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Figure 1. Upper Panel: A set of trained and derived stimulus relations between a spoken word (A), a picture (B) and a textual stimulus (C) of the kind
shown in Sidman (1971). Lower Panel: A set of trained and derived stimulus relations between arbitrary (shape) stimuli.

actual linguistic stimuli (i.e. words, sounds and text), but

ensuing research showed that participants would also
derive equivalence relations after being trained with
completely novel abstract symbols and shapes (e.g. see
Figure 1, lower panel). As such, it was an empirically controllable phenomenon that was entirely separable from
language at a topographical level, yet it had functional
properties of stimulus substitutability and generativity
that are also key linguistic properties, suggesting that it
could be used to provide a useful model of language.
Accompanying empirical work also demonstrated another
important property of this type of behaviour known as
the transfer of function whereby a psychological function

conditioned in one stimulus in an equivalence relation

spontaneously appeared in other stimuli in that relation
without additional training. This further bolstered the
suggestion that equivalence could provide the foundation for a functional model of language (e.g. Dougher,
Augustson, Markham, Greenway, & Wulfert, 1994).
Apart from providing yet another example of the generativity of stimulus equivalence, this transfer of function
effect also has important implications for functional
models of linguistic meaning. For example, this effect
parallels a process in which a previously unknown word
can come to gain meaning by being equated with a
previously known word.
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A range of further findings conducted since Sidman

(1971) have provided additional evidence that stimulus
equivalence and language are correlated. For instance,
human subjects (both typically developing and developmentally delayed) scoring at age 2 or above on standardised tests of linguistic competence tend to pass tests
of stimulus equivalence while non-humans and humans
scoring below age 2 tend to fail (e.g. Barnes, McCullagh, & Keenan, 1990; Dugdale & Lowe, 1990); empirical
effects such as semantic priming that are seen for real
words are also seen for stimuli in equivalence relations
(e.g. Barnes-Holmes et al., 2005); and patterns of neural
activity recorded during equivalence testing are similar
to those seen during linguistic processing (e.g. Ogawa,
Yamazaki, Ueno, Cheng, & Iriki, 2010).
Despite the growing interest and utility of stimulus
equivalence, initially, there was no idea of how to conceptualise this behaviour at a theoretical level. Then in the
mid-1980s, the earliest proponents of RFT suggested that
stimulus equivalence was in fact an example of what they
termed AARR (Hayes & Brownstein, 1985). It was also
argued, and shown in early work (e.g. Steele & Hayes,
1991), that AARR encompassed not just arbitrarily applicable sameness relating but a variety of other relations, all
of which shared three core properties. The first, mutual
entailment, refers to the finding that a relation trained in
one direction entails a second relation in the other (e.g. if
A > B then B < A).The second, combinatorial entailment,
refers to the fact that relations can be combined to derive
new relations (e.g. if A > B and B > C then A > C and
C < A). Third, a more generic version of the transfer of
functions effect seen in stimulus equivalence is called the
transformation of functions. This refers to the finding that
a stimulus in an arbitrarily applicable relation can gain
new response functions without the need for training simply by being related to other stimuli (e.g. if A > B > C and
B is conditioned to be aversive then A will become less
aversive and C more aversive; e.g. see Dougher, Hamilton,
Fink, & Harrington, 2007).
Several researchers argued that, based on these symbolic and generative properties, AARR was likely the key
operant process underlying human language and cognition (e.g. Hayes & Hayes, 1992). Since then an extensive body of work has supported this core thesis (a) by
showing that ability to perform AARR is not simply correlated with language but begins to emerge before the
development of a sophisticated language repertoire (e.g.
Luciano, Gmez-Becerra, & Rodrguez-Valverde, 2007);
(b) by showing that training AARR using solely abstract
stimuli can greatly boost verbal and intellectual ability
more generally (e.g. Cassidy, Roche, & Hayes, 2011);
(c) by providing controlled demonstrations of the origins
and development of different types of AARR (e.g. Berens
& Hayes, 2007); (d) by convincingly demonstrating that
AARR meets all relevant criteria for being an operant (e.g. Healy, Barnes-Holmes, & Smeets, 2000); and
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perhaps most importantly in the current context, (e) by

showing the utility of AARR as a functional analytic
unit for analysing human language and cognition (see
Dymond & Roche, 2013; Hughes & Barnes-Holmes, in
press-a, in press-b).
RFT OFFERS A SOPHISTICATED FUNCTIONAL
APPROACH TO COMPLEX HUMAN BEHAVIOUR
This utility is the key to the excitement surrounding
AARR. This concept allows functional researchers to
finally grapple with complex human behaviour in ways
that have been sorely missing in the past. Recall three
key points from above: that (1) a core scientific goal for
functional researchers involves exerting influence over
the phenomena of interest; (2) those same researchers
seek to achieve this goal by focusing their analysis
on manipulable environmental variables; and (3) by
achieving influence over behaviour those researchers
hope to directly intervene in the world (e.g. develop
programme and strategies that positively impact education, psychotherapy, developmental disability etc.). As a
functional approach, RFT allows all of these advantages
to be brought to bear on the analysis of human language
and cognition.
At this point, almost three decades since RFT was
first proposed, the promise of the application of a data
driven functional analysis of human behaviour continues
to bear fruit; three decades of research have unlocked
new functional insight into a multitude of phenomena and
this insight has translated into new empirical findings and
applications. In the following sections, I provide a very
brief overview of the application of RFT to the exploration
of human language and cognition.
Linguistic generativity
Evidence strongly suggests that AARR represents the
operant behaviour underpinning human language and that
approaching language from this (functional) perspective
unlocks new insight into, and ways of training, verbal
abilities where they were previously absent or weak.
Indeed, as touched upon earlier, we now know (a) that
AARR correlates strongly with verbal ability; (b) that
it also emerges before verbal ability is established, suggesting that the former underpins the latter; (c) that the
emergence of increasingly complex language abilities
closely coincides with the development of increasingly
complex forms of AARR; (d) that AARR shows all the
properties of an operant behaviour; (e) that the concept
of AARR can be used to model key features of language including grammar, syntax and rule-based learning and (f) that AARR training with meaningless stimuli
can nonetheless produce substantial improvement in standardised measures of verbal ability, which both further

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supports the idea that AARR underpins language and also

illustrates the practical utility of this concept (e.g. Berens
& Hayes, 2007; Cassidy et al., 2011; Luciano et al., 2007;
Moran, Stewart, McElwee, & Ming, 2014; Murphy &
Barnes-Holmes, 2010b; OHora, Barnes-Holmes, Roche,
& Smeets, 2004; OHora, Barnes-Holmes, & Stewart,
2014; Stewart, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2004; Weil,
Hayes, & Capurro, 2011).
One key area in which the practical potential of RFT
is already evident is in establishing linguistic generativity
(i.e. the ability to understand and generate novel linguistic constructions as opposed to simply producing rote
learned words or phrases). This is particularly important
in developmentally delayed populations for whom this
feature is often absent. Such work is helping to expand
the linguistic capabilities of individuals with developmental delay who might otherwise be trapped within the
confines of very limiting language repertoires. In the case
of typically developing individuals, we derive relations
between objects, events and people through our interactions with the socioverbal community, we elaborate our
network of related stimuli, and the world increasingly
takes on new verbally derived functions. For individuals
whose ability to engage in AARR is weak or absent, it is
critical to establish and/or strengthen this capacity across
multiple relations, starting with simple and advancing to
more complex. By doing so, we open up the verbal world
for them.
Consider, for instance, a recent series of studies which
focused on generativity as it relates to the ability to make
novel requests (e.g. Rehfeldt & Root, 2005). This ability is of substantial practical importance in the applied
arena where communicative inflexibility can result in
greatly restricted social interactions as well as aggression and self-injury. This work demonstrated that it is
possible to rapidly expand the requesting repertoire of
developmentally disabled individuals by establishing a
coordination (similarity) relation between known stimuli with request functions and novel or previously unseen
stimuli. For example, Rehfeldt and Root (2005) taught
three adults with developmental disabilities to request
preferred items (e.g. candy) using pictures. They then
established an equivalence relation between these pictures and corresponding printed item names (e.g. the
word CANDY) and subsequently showed that participants quickly came to request preferred items using
the printed names as well. In this way they showed
how participants repertoire of practically useful skills
could be rapidly expanded without the need for extensive
training.
While initial studies capitalised on participants previously established repertoires of AARR, a number of
more recent studies have used multiple-exemplar training
(MET) to establish, or at least substantially strengthen,
AARR repertoires (e.g. Murphy & Barnes-Holmes,
2010a, 2010b). As the ability to engage in AARR is

seen by RFT as the wellspring of linguistic generativity, studies that advance our basic understanding and
methodological capability to grapple with this particular
type of behaviour are of key importance.
The research just discussed is only a start. It is a proof
of concept. Much research remains to be done creating and tapping into more varied relations and functions,
with substantial promise both for those trained as well
as for our theoretical understanding of the development
and training of language skills more generally. Although
developmental delay is a major area of focus for applied
AARR research on linguistic generativity, work is not by
any means confined to this arena. In fact, paradigms both
capitalising on and strengthening transformation of functions skills are already beginning to be used to boost learning and generativity in various domains of mainstream
education, from spelling, and reading, to grammar, mathematics and non-native language learning spanning primary, secondary and tertiary levels (e.g. Lovett, Rehfeldt,
Garcia, & Dunning, 2011; Ninness et al., 2009; Ramirez
& Rehfeldt, 2009; Walker & Rehfeldt, 2012). Such work
promises substantial educational progress as our theoretical and technical knowledge is further refined.
Rules and instructions
Rules, provided by others or ourselves, are a ubiquitous
and powerful influence on our behaviour, often positive
(e.g. allowing goal-setting, delay of gratification or problem solving), though sometimes not (e.g. contributing to
maladaptive habit formation or even psychopathology).
A significant amount of basic operant work from the
1960s onwards has shown both adaptive and non-adaptive
effects of rule-following (e.g. Hayes, 1989; Shimoff,
Catania, & Matthews, 1981). However, with the advent
of RFT, operant researchers have been able to understand
and model rule-following itself at a basic level in terms of
networks of AARR (OHora et al., 2004, 2014). OHora
et al. (2004), for example, showed that rules could be
functionally understood as networks of coordinate and
temporal AARR which transform the functions of stimuli specified in the rule so as to bring our behaviour under
the control of those stimuli. OHora et al. (2014) extended
this work to examine conditions under which rules thus
modelled may or may not be followed. Such work has
also begun to allow the investigation of initial learning of
rule-following and production as well as providing a platform for studying several important rule-related phenomena including moral development (e.g. Hayes, Gifford, &
Hayes, 1998), grammar and syntax (e.g. McHugh & Reed,
2008) and pathological rule-following (e.g. McAuliffe,
Hughes, & Barnes-Holmes, 2014). Through the adoption
of a functional analytic approach to these domains, new
theoretical insights and practical methods may emerge
that further our understanding and boost our practical
capabilities in this respect.
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Figure 2. An example of a simple analogy, interpreted within RFT as a derived equivalence (coordination) relation between derived relations. In this
example, which has been modelled in empirical research, the related relations are also equivalence relations and thus this is also referred to as an
equivalenceequivalence relation.

Analogy
Analogy is regarded as a central element of higher human
cognition; it is a key vehicle for purposes of communication and also functions as a metric of intelligent behaviour.
RFT suggests that analogy can be conceptualised as the
behaviour of relating one set of arbitrarily applicable relations to another (e.g. equivalence-equivalence responding; see Figure 2).
Barnes, Hegarty, and Smeets (1997) provided the first
empirical demonstration of analogical reasoning thus
conceptualised. The authors initially administered a learning task in which a series of equivalence relations were
derived between abstract stimuli. They then showed that
people would not only do this but they would also derive
relations between equivalence relations themselves. In
this way, the researchers showed that a laboratory produced pattern of AARR could be used to model analogy. This both further bolstered the argument that AARR
was a key process underlying language and also provided a means of studying analogical processes in a controlled, functionally specified way, uncontaminated to a
much greater degree than usual by previous, unknowable
learning.
Since then, a number of studies have used this model
to explore features of analogical reasoning including, for
example, its developmental trajectory, its neural correlates, the relationship between analogical complexity and
speed and the effects of training on ability to derive new
analogies (e.g. Barnes-Holmes et al., 2005; Carpentier,
Smeets, Barnes-Holmes, & Stewart, 2004; Lipkens &
Hayes, 2009).
Work examining the developmental trajectory of analogical reasoning provides perhaps the best example of
potential advantages of a functional approach. This comprised a series of studies comparing analogical AARR in
different age groups including adults, 9- and 5-year olds
(Carpentier et al., 2004). Results revealed that whereas
the former two groups readily show analogical AARR,
the 5-year olds could not unless given specific remediation. This suggests a developmental divide between early
and late childhood similar to that reported by researchers
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interested in the origins of analogical reasoning (e.g.

Sternberg & Rifkin, 1979). Results also indicated that
apparently successful analogical responding by children
younger than five might be based on processes other than
matching functionally similar relations (Carpentier et al.,
2004). These studies are noteworthy for several reasons.
First, they have further validated the RFT approach by
recapitulating findings from mainstream developmental
research that had suggested a developmental divide in
ability to show analogy between early and late childhood.
Second, they have extended beyond such work by (a) providing a functional analytic model of analogy that is both
more precisely defined and better controlled than analogy as shown in previous research and (b) successfully
establishing analogical responding in children previously
missing this repertoire. The latter in particular has implications with regard to the development of educational
interventions for both typically developing and developmentally delayed children, in both of whom development
of analogical ability specifically as well as intelligent performance more generally could be accelerated (for more
on this see Stewart & Barnes-Holmes, 2009).
Intellectual development
Many psychologists have assumed that a common underlying factor called intelligence exists, that it ties intellectual skills together and that it can be measured using
intelligence quotient (IQ) tests (e.g. Kaufman, 2009). In
contrast, functional psychologists have typically rejected
the concept of intelligence as a hypothetical construct.
Nevertheless, IQ does predict educational and life success
(e.g. Deary, Strand, Smith, & Fernandes, 2007; Schmidt
& Hunter, 1998) and thus appears to reflect an important set of behaviours. RFT suggests that intelligence
refers to the fluency (i.e. speed and accuracy) with which
people AARR (see Cassidy, Roche, & OHora, 2010).
This assumption has recently received empirical support
on several fronts (e.g. Gore, Barnes-Holmes, & Murphy,
2010; OToole & Barnes-Holmes, 2009) with one line of
research in particular highlighting the potential of a functional approach.

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Cassidy et al. (2011) set out to manipulate peoples fluency in AARRing, and to examine effects of so doing
on their performance on measures of intellectual ability.
They trained separate groups of educationally typical and
sub-typical children in patterns of AARRing that included
responding based on sameness, comparison and opposition. The authors found that this relational training successfully improved the speed and accuracy with which
children related stimuli in all three cases. More importantly though, it also produced improvements in full and
subscale IQ performances (Wechsler intelligence scale for
children-IV, WISC-IV; Wechsler, 2004). In Experiment 1,
involving educationally typical children, the effect size5
for improvement in IQ was 5.13. In Experiment 2, which
included children with substantial educational difficulties,
full scale IQ rose by at least one standard deviation for
seven of the eight, and the change was also significant at
the group level. Furthermore, follow-up testing conducted
4 years later showed that in all cases IQ rises were maintained well over this very large follow-up period.
Non-RFT studies have also shown improvements in
intelligence based on training. For example, Jeggi et al.
have found that practice on the dual n-back procedure
can produce gains in fluid intelligence (the ability to reason and solve new problems independently of previously
acquired knowledge; see Jeggi, Buschkuehl, Jonides, &
Perrig, 2008). However, Cassidy et al. (2011) are unique
in showing such substantial rises in full scale IQ, which
is based on a much broader range of skills than the performance measured by Jeggi et al. (2008). Overall, the
findings from the former suggest the efficacy of MET for
improving the fluency of AARR as well as for intellectual
performance more generally. Of course, these results are
only preliminary and thus caution is certainly warranted.
Larger better controlled studies, some of which are currently underway, will further increase confidence in the
effects seen thus far.
After further testing and sufficient refinement, a more
extensive protocol such as this might be used as the basis
of a school curriculum. If the evidence from smaller
studies continues to support the contention that AARR
training is a key to substantially boosting intelligence,
then large scale and/or longitudinal educational research
is warranted to more fully gauge the potential of this
paradigm by assessing and training more complex patterns of AARR. Furthermore, populations other than simply school age children might benefit from appropriately
calibrated training, including typically developing adults,
the educationally deprived at various ages, developmentally delayed populations and the elderly (and perhaps
especially those suffering from dementia or related illnesses). Success in one or more such projects would both
bolster the theoretical argument for the core importance
5 Based

of AARR in human intellectual activity while also further

underlining the applied potential of AARR training.

Perspective taking
The ability to take the perspective of others and thus
anticipate their beliefs, intentions, emotions and desires
is central to much of our social lives (Epley, Morewedge,
& Keysar, 2004). ToM, which suggests that perspective taking is based on an ability to mentally represent
the mind of others has become the dominant paradigm
within which this ability has been studied. RFT, however,
takes a different approach and views perspective taking
as an instance of deictic AARR (i.e. relational responding that is based on the perspective of the speaker).
It suggests that through socioverbal interaction, children learn to respond to and to employ interpersonal (I
vs. You), spatial (Here vs. There) and temporal (Now
vs. Then) cues when relating stimuli and events in the
environment.
Despite the fact that research into deictic AARR
began only a little over 10 years ago a number of insightful studies have already been conducted. For instance,
McHugh, Barnes-Holmes, and Barnes-Holmes (2004)
demonstrated a strong correlation between deictic AARR,
ToM-based assessment and cognitive ability more generally. When these authors investigated the development of
deictic AARR in a range of age groups from early childhood to adulthood, they found that response accuracy on a
programme of deictic AARR tasks increased as a function
of age, supporting the suggestion that this was an operant
repertoire acquired and strengthened through years of
interaction with the socioverbal environment. They also
found an overlap with findings from both the developmental and ToM literatures. With regard to the former, they
found that spatial (here-there) relations emerged before
temporal (now-then) relations, coherent with evidence
from previous research (e.g. Piaget, 1967). Meanwhile
the traditional ToM literature argues that performances
on simple ToM tasks should improve between the ages of
4 and 5 years (Baron-Cohen, Tager-Flusberg, & Cohen,
2000), which coheres with the McHugh et al. finding that
middle childhood participants performed more similar to
older participants than to children in the youngest group.
Others have observed that deficits in the ability to
perspective take (especially in clinical populations) are
also associated with deficits in deictic AARRing abilities.
For instance, Rehfeldt, Dillen, Ziomek, and Kowalchuk
(2007) found that children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) display greater deficits in deictic AARRing
relative to their typically developing counterparts while
Villatte, Monests, McHugh, Freixa i Baqu, and Loas

on the method of calculation suggested for repeated methods and multilevel designs by Rosenthal and Rosnow (1991).

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FRUITS OF A FUNCTIONAL APPROACH

(2010) found that participants with schizophrenia perform

worse than age matched controls when complex deictic
AARR tasks are administered.
The above research bolsters the RFT case that perspective taking might be conceptualised in terms of
deictic AARR. Yet given the pragmatic aim of achieving
influence over, not simply being able to understand or
predict, important classes of behaviour, RFT researchers
should also be able to train perspective-taking abilities
where previously absent or weak. Weil et al. (2011) have
taken an important step in this direction by using MET to
enhance deictic AARR in typically developing preschool
children. As well as improving deictic AARRing, the
authors also observed general increases on cognitive tests
of perspective taking. An important next step will be
to investigate if MET can also be used as a method for
training deictic AARRand thus perspective takingin
populations that often show deficits in these abilities (e.g.
ASD). In any event, this study suggests that perspective
taking conceptualised as deictic AARR is an operant
that can be taught via MET. Success in such work would
truly underline the substantial practical significance of
the RFT approach both within relevant clinical arenas as
well as more generally.
Psychopathology and psychotherapy
Another domain that demonstrates the potential utility
of a functionaland more specifically RFTapproach
is experimental psychopathology. For example, a key
issue in this latter domain is the transdiagnostic processes that are central to fear conditioning and avoidance.
A well-established finding here is that direct contact with
an aversive event is often unnecessary to produce fear and
avoidance towards stimuli or events. For example, someone with a spider phobia might avoid going to a particular country if told that there are particularly dangerous
species of spiders living there (Muris & Field, 2010). Furthermore, it has also been suggested that a key process in
development of fear and avoidance is generalisation along
conceptual or semantic continua (Dunsmoor, Martin, &
LaBar, 2012). For example, people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) can come to fear objects or events
with which they have had no previous contact based on the
verbally abstracted possibility of contamination. While
the cognitive tradition have explained phenomena such
as this in mentalistic terms, up until recently a purely
functional definition of what such processes involve has
been absent. Now, however, RFT has begun to make a
contribution by providing such a functional definition,

complementing the cognitive approach and offering the

possibility of new insights into these phenomena6 .
RFT researchers have shown that the fear responses
elicited by one stimulus can both transfer (e.g. Dougher
et al., 1994) and transform (e.g. Dougher et al., 2007)
how people respond to other stimuli via AARR and have
argued that these functionally defined and thus empirically controllable phenomena are the core processes
responsible for generalisation of avoidance and fear along
arbitrary dimensions (e.g. Dymond, Dunsmoor, Vervliet,
Roche & Hermans, 2014; Smyth, Barnes-Holmes, &
Forsyth, 2006).
To illustrate, consider a study by Augustson and
Dougher (1997) who established two equivalence relations between arbitrary stimuli. They then paired a shock
with a stimulus from the first but not second relation.
When they then induced avoidance towards this stimulus
they found that participants also came to fear and avoid all
the other members of the first but not second equivalence
relation. Dymond, Roche, Forsyth, Whelan, and Rhoden
(2007) extended this research by showing that the nature
of fear and avoidance response differs depending on how
people relate stimuli (e.g. stimuli derived as being the
same as an aversive stimulus generally elicit avoidance
while ones derived as being opposite typically elicit
approach; see also Roche, Kanter, Brown, Dymond, &
Fogarty, 2008). Others have investigated the transfer
and transformation of approach and avoidance functions
(Gannon, Roche, Kanter, Forsyth, & Linehan, 2011);
compared direct experience, instructions and AARR
pathways for fear and avoidance acquisition (Dymond,
Schlund, Roche, De Houwer, & Freegard, 2012); examined transfer of self-reported arousal (Smyth et al., 2006)
and avoidance in specific phobias (Dymond, Schlund,
Roche & Whelan, 2014); modelled the contribution of
AARR to ironic effects such as thought suppression (e.g.
Hooper, Stewart, Duffy, Freegard, & McHugh, 2012);
and compared direct and derived extinction as processes
that can contribute to psychotherapeutic effects (Roche
et al., 2008).
The analyses and models outlined above all use
the same core functionally defined concepts (in particular, transformation of functions through AARR),
to investigate a variety of phenomena in the area
of psychopathology and psychotherapy. This use of
well-defined concepts across analyses is a hallmark of
the functional approach in this and other domains and one
which supports ease of understanding, communication
and comparison across studies. These latter features in
turn should help boost achievement of practical change in

6 As an aside, fear is only one psychological property or function that may conceptually generalise; other functions that might be relevant to
psychopathology such as disgust may also do so, possibly through functionally similar processes. Here, I focus on fear because it appears especially
relevant in the context of psychopathology and because most functional analytic work heretofore has been done using fear. However, of course, analysis
of other relevant functions in terms of AARR may also be useful.

2015 International Union of Psychological Science

10

STEWART

relevant behaviour, which is the core focus of a functional

approach. It is early days in the use of a modern functional
orientation with regard to language with respect to understanding clinical phenomena and indeed, given that these
phenomena involve fully verbal human adults who
present with often complex verbally sophisticated problems, it is likely that much further work will be needed
to develop appropriate and tailored interventions based
on this basic research. The fact that relevant analysis
of therapeutic processes coherent with the analyses of
psychopathology are already starting to emerge such as
in the work of Roche et al. (2008) is a good early sign. In
any event, given the emergent advances in other arenas to
which the current functional understanding of language
has been applied and the fact that it offers something
unique and new to research in the clinical arena, the
adoption of this approach arguably holds much promise.
Implicit cognition
Evidence indicates that individuals can often respond
in two qualitatively distinct and sometimes conflicting
ways. On one hand, they can respond in an explicit or
non-automatic manner that is typically controlled, intentional and occurs with awareness. On the other hand, they
can also respond in an implicit or automatic manner that
is often characterised by the absence of these features.
Researchers have often been interested in implicit cognition given that it often predicts peoples future actions
in a range of important domains to a greater extent than
their self-reported behaviours (see Nosek, Hawkins, &
Frazier, 2011).
A majority of research on implicit cognition has been
carried out by researchers operating at the mental level
of analysis and who have largely focused on the specific
mental constructs that are assumed to mediate between
(automatic) behaviour and the environment. In addition,
the predominant conceptualisation of implicit cognition
up until recently from within this orientation was that it
was based on mental associations. Just recently, however,
RFT researchers have offered a novel functional analytic
conceptualisation of implicit cognition in terms of the
process of AARR (see Barnes-Holmes, Barnes-Holmes,
Stewart, & Boles, 2010; Hughes, Barnes-Holmes, &
Vahey, 2012). This argues (a) that explicit and implicit
cognition represent instances of the same functionally
defined process (i.e. AARR) and (b) that differences
between them are based on differences with respect to
AARR complexity (how many stimuli and/or relations
are involved in an instance of relational responding) and
level of derivation (the more a particular relation has
been derived previously, the lower the level of derivation
currently involved). This RFT account presents several
potential advantages for the field.
First, it is parsimonious in explaining implicit and
explicit cognition as the same basic process differing

only with respect to certain qualities (namely complexity

and derivation); more specifically, implicit responding
is characterised by lower levels of both complexity and
derivation than explicit cognition. Second, by arguing
for implicit cognition as relational rather than associational, it allows for a richer conceptualisation of this
process with greater explanatory power and scope for
experimental investigation. The idea of implicit cognition as relational has in addition foreshadowed recent
findings from within the cognitive approach also (see De
Houwer, 2014) Third, based on the latter and the functional analytic methods already developed to examine
relational responding within RFT, this approach has given
rise to a potentially useful new procedure for examining
implicit cognition, namely, the implicit relational assessment procedure (IRAP; Barnes-Holmes et al., 2006). The
IRAP facilitates the exploration of AARR under time
pressure, a key feature of the conditions under which
implicit cognition is typically seen, and has allowed relatively wide-ranging exploration of this domain within
a short space of time (see Hughes & Barnes-Holmes,
2013), particularly, in the domain of psychopathology
(Vahey, Nicholson, & Barnes-Holmes, 2015). While these
advantages are mainly interesting to those approaching
psychology from a functional perspective, for cognitive
researchers it represents another contribution of the functional approach to at least the extent that it offers a novel
means of exploring the domain of implicit cognition.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
This article introduced RFT as a functional approach to
complex human behaviour and examined empirical work
that has applied this approach in a number of domains of
theoretical and empirical interest. In the context of the
current word limit, it has not been possible to provide a
very detailed overview of past and ongoing work. However, it is hoped at least to have conveyed a sense of the
potential of RFT and to have pointed readers interested
in finding out more to useful sources (e.g. Dymond &
Roche, 2013; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes and Roche, 2001;
Hughes & Barnes-Holmes, in press-a, in press-b). While
RFT can be argued to have offered a substantial amount of
new and pragmatically useful insight thus far, it is envisaged that continued work in the domains discussed here
and others to which it may be applied in the future will
have much more to offer, especially with respect to the
practical application of psychological science.
Manuscript received October 2014
Revised manuscript accepted May 2015

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