The Unfolding of the Relational Operant: A Real-time Analysis Using Electroencephalography and Reaction Time Measures

The current study attempted to capture in real time the unfolding of the relational operant using electroencephalography (EEG) and reaction time measures. Participants were exposed to relational pretraining to establish the contextual cues of Same and Opposite for two arbitrary stimuli. These cues were then used to establish a series of contextually controlled discriminations in order to create a simple relational network among a series of arbitrary stimuli. During the test for derived relations of Same and Opposite, EEG and reaction time measures were recorded for each individual test task during the acquisition of a stable derived relational response pattern. Participants were then exposed to an identical set of relational training and testing tasks with the important difference that an entirely different set of stimuli was used. EEG and reaction time measures were again recorded during the relational test phase. Results showed that reaction times decreased for all subjects across successive test tasks and from the first to the second stimulus set. EEG data also suggested that there was increasingly less higher cognitive activity during the derivation of successive stimulus relations within and across stimulus sets. Taken together these findings provide support for the idea that derived relational responding can be viewed as an operant activity that both develops and generalizes

Terrorism and Relational Frame Theory

The present paper presents a conceptualization of human behavior involved in terrorism from a Relational Frame Theory perspective. Relational frame theory is a contemporary behavior analytic account of human language and cognition. This account has yielded answers to many substantial empirical and theoretical psychological questions that have puzzled psychologists for some time. We believe that relational frame theory can and does account for the behavior of terrorists, those persons affected by terrorists acts directly and indirectly, as well as the entire culture of a country at large. This paper outlines the current state of psychological affairs regarding terrorism in the United States of America, traces the evolution and application of relational frame theory, and describes the prejudices that may follow from a terrorist attack or contribute to terrorist recruitment. Implications for scientists and practitioners are also presented

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

An evaluation of multiple exemplar instruction to teach perspective-taking skills to adolescents with Asperger Syndrome

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of multiple exemplar instruction for teaching perspective-taking skills Ruth Anne Rehfeldt to young adults with autism. Using a multiple probe design, participants were trained and tested using protocols evaluating the deictic frames of I-You, Here-There, and Now-Then. Generalization of perspective-taking skills was evaluated using two standardized assessments designed to evaluate theory of mind, which were administered at pre and posttest. Generalization of perspective-taking skills to a more natural language situation was also assessed. Results showed the emergence of perspective-taking for all participants following multiple exemplar instruction, and varying degrees of generalization of perspective-taking skills to a natural presentation of social interaction were observed based on the complexity of the perspective-taking relation

Why we are not acting to save ourselves: ACT, Health, and Culture

Chronic health conditions are increasing at an alarming rate world-wide, and many could be prevented if people were to engage in specific lifestyle behaviors. Intervening on lifestyle behaviors is challenging due to the fact that the consequences associated with unhealthy behaviors are temporally distant and probabilistic, and the aversive functions of covert stimuli may interfere with people’s engagement in healthy, preventative behaviors. This paper explores the role of relational framing in the promotion of healthy lifestyle behaviors, and summarizes research supporting the use of Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) as a framework for prevention and intervention. We explore how ACT alters the context in which rigid patterns of rule-following occur. ACT loosens the literal functions of stimuli so that experiential avoidance behaviors are weakened and healthy, values-consistent behaviors are strengthened. We propose culture-wide interventions inspired by Contextual Behavior Science so that healthier societies can be cultivated

Music as a Cultural Inheritance System: A Contextual-Behavioral Model of Symbolism, Meaning, and the Value of Music

Music is a pervasive cultural practice that has been present in ancient civilizations through to the present, yet its evolutionary significance has not been unequivocally determined. One position suggests that evolution favored music-related behaviors because such behaviors were linked to sexual selection and reproduction. A more recent perspective that is consistent with today’s evolutionary science framework suggests that music is a cultural-level adaptation because of the survival advantages it affords members of a community. This paper explores the selection mechanisms responsible for the retention and transmission of music-related behaviors. Music is proposed to be a complex symbolic inheritance system, or an advanced form of relational responding, that required cooperation to develop and further facilitated unity and affinity among groups of people. The aggregate product of this cooperation is then assigned meaning and selected by the contingencies of a particular sociocultural community. Music may thus occasion similar values-consistent behavior (i.e., within the values system of the community) across groups of people. Implications for the role of music in promoting the well-being of a culture are examined