Beyond Skinner? A Review of Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition by Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche

Abstract

In their book, Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Account of Human Language and Cognition (2001), Hayes, Barnes-Holmes and Roche challenge behavior analysts to put aside Skinner and Verbal Behavior in favor of relational frame theory's approach to human language and cognition. However, when viewed from the contexts of behavior analysis, the principles of behavior analysis, and the principles of the founder of behavior analysis, Relational Frame Theory fits squarely in the Skinnerian, behavior analytic tradition. As with Verbal Behavior, Relational Frame Theory and its theses may be thought of as logical and empirical extensions of that which precedes them.

B. F. Skinner: The writer and his definition of verbal behavior

“…The animal and the experimenter comprise a small but genuine verbal community. (p. 108) This note has been interpreted, not just by Hayes et al (2001) but by several others in the field of behavior analysis (e.g., see Leigland, 1997;Michael & Malott, 2003;Normand, 2009;Palmer, 2008), as stating that all animal behavior in operant learning experiments is verbal because the reinforcement is directly or indirectly delivered by the experimenter, who was trained to do so (for a different understanding of Skinner's stand on this issue, see Osborne, 2003;Passos, 2007;and Vargas in Arntzen, 2010). As we will explore in the next section, it is possible that this is not what Skinner meant by his footnote, and the fact that so many scholars interpreted it in a way arguably not intended by Skinner might be partially explained by the point made by Malott and Peterson discussed above, that is, that mediation by others became the most conspicuous feature in the definition of verbal behavior.…”

Relational Frame Theory: An Overview of the Controversy

“…Post-Skinnerian. One criticism of RFT is that it is not truly post-Skinnerian because of its reliance on many of the same fundamental principles as Skinner's (1957) analysis (Osborne, 2003). Osborne argued that RFT is simply an extension of Skinner's work on verbal behavior because RFT, like Skinner's analysis, describes complex human behavior using a small set of behavioral principles.…”