JOURNAL OF THE EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOR

2014, 101, 1–9

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EDITORIAL: BASIC AND TRANSLATIONAL RESEARCH ON STIMULUS–STIMULUS RELATIONS MICHAEL DOUGHER1, MICHAEL P. TWOHIG2, AND GREGORY J. MADDEN2 1

UNIVERSITY OF NEW MEXICO 2 UTAH STATE UNIVERSITY

further training, demonstrates that A ¼ A, B ¼ B, C ¼ C, B ¼ A, C ¼ A, B ¼ C, and C ¼ B, typically in a conditional discrimination task where the first symbol serves as a sample stimulus and the second is selected from several available comparison stimuli (Sidman & Tailby, 1982). Substituting a dog for Stimulus A, “dog” for B, and “perro” for C, reveals why this research paradigm was quickly recognized as a means by which a behavior-analytic approach might be applied to the study of complex cognitive phenomena (e.g., Fields, Verhave, & Fath, 1984; Sidman, 1986). That is, an approach focused on identifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for producing emergent relating behavior. This special issue of the Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior (JEAB) focuses on stimulus–stimulus relations. Understanding the varieties of relating behavior has generated an enormous amount of research in human and animal laboratories and the findings have generated new theories that have themselves occasioned additional investigations. As has so often been the case in our science, translational research findings have emerged and, in some circles, have proliferated. This special issue of JEAB offers an opportunity to look back upon what we know, what we are learning today, and to consider the ongoing potential of what has proven to be a fruitful research line. In what follows of this editorial, we walk that path.

One of the great challenges for a behavioral science is to provide an account of emergent stimulus–stimulus relations not explained by primary stimulus generalization. For example, the relation between the visual stimulus dog and the sound made when someone says “dog” is often referred to as arbitrary because the two stimuli have no point-to-point correspondence (one is a sound, the other a creature incapable of making the sound “dog”). In humans, through natural language training, these two stimuli are related (an activity) such that they may occasion similar responding. For example, a child suffering from a dog phobia may experience an increased heart rate and jump into the arms of a parent who says, at the front door of a friend’s house, “They have a dog,” just as he would if he saw the dog. This two-member class of arbitrarily related stimuli is expanded when the verbal response “perro” is related as equivalent to “dog” and, subsequently, hearing “They have a perro” elicits the same fear responding in the dog-phobic listener. Emergent stimulus relations have been of interest since the beginnings of experimental psychology (e.g., Anrep, 1923; Bass & Hull, 1934; Hull, 1939; Shipley, 1933) and since that time, an extensive taxonomy of the variety of stimulus–stimulus relations has been created (see Murphy, 2002; Zentall, Galizio, & Critchfield, 2002). The study of emergent relating behavior experienced a behavior-analytic renaissance, of sorts, in the 1970s when Murray Sidman dropped everything else and began publishing studies on what would come to be called stimulus equivalence (Sidman, 1971; Sidman & Cresson, 1973; Sidman, Cresson, & WillsonMorris, 1974). As most readers know, stimuli are related as equivalent when following If A Then B and If A Then C training, the individual, without

Laboratory Advances in Relational Responding In the 1980s and early 1990s foundational studies were conducted (e.g., Bush, Sidman, & de Rose, 1989; Dube, McIlvane, Maguire, Mackay, & Stoddard, 1989; Hayes, Kohlenberg, & Hayes, 1991; Sidman, 1986; Sidman, Kirk, & Willson-Morris, 1985; Sidman & Tailby, 1982) and in the decades that followed important theoretical accounts of the origin of relating behavior emerged. Sidman (2000), for example, suggested that the nature of the four-term

Correspondence should be addressed to Gregory J. Madden, Utah State University, Department of Psychology, EDUC 498, Logan, UT 84322 (e-mail: greg.madden@usu. edu). doi: 10.1002/jeab.69

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reinforcement contingency was that context, discriminative stimulus, response, and reinforcer could all come to function as equivalent stimuli. Sidman’s hypothesis is experimentally explored in this special issue of JEAB by Johnson, Meleshkevich, and Dube (2014). Their study establishes two 3-member equivalence classes, each with a different type of reinforcer, and then, for the first time in the published literature, uses these outcome-specific reinforcers to merge the two classes into one 8member equivalence class. Johnson et al. speculate on how such mergers in natural human environments could expand classes of equivalent stimuli in a way that could generatively expand the stimuli that elicit, for example, unwanted emotional responding, a topic considered again later in this paper. Understanding the origin(s) of stimulus– stimulus relating is important if we are to efficiently establish these relations in individuals for whom they do not typically develop (e.g., Carr, Wilkinson, Blackman & McIlvane, 2000; Maguire, Stromer, Mackay & Demis, 1994) and if we are interested in mapping the evolutionary origins of complex relating behavior. The literature review by Zentall, Wasserman, and Urcuioli (2014) in this issue provides an overview of the extensive concept-learning research conducted with nonhumans, research designed to explore the necessary and sufficient conditions for establishing stimulus–stimulus relations of myriad types. The Zentall et al. review outlines representational accounts of emergent (untrained) stimulus–stimulus relating behavior, and summarizes the results of frequently ingenious experiments designed to test these accounts. The article also reviews procedures that have proven effective in creating functional classes of stimuli and recent advances in establishing emergent symmetric relations (following A!B training relating B!A emerges) in nonhumans (e.g., Frank & Wasserman, 2005; Urcuioli, 2008). The latter portion of the Zentall et al. paper makes for fascinating reading as it reveals how the relating behavior of the scientist arranging the experiment is different from that of the nonhuman in that the latter lacks the extended learning history of an adult human (e.g., learning that when naming an object “red” it matters not when, where, or what shape the red object takes). Researchers working from different theoretical orientations provide commentaries

on the Zentall et al. paper (Hughes & BarnesHolmes, 2014; Dymond, 2014; McIlvane, 2014), and the spirited discussion concludes with a reply by Urcuioli, Wasserman, and Zentall (2014). This special issue of JEAB includes two experiments representing this animal-research tradition. The paper by Campos, Urcuioli, and Swisher (2014) further investigates the emergent symmetric relating behavior of pigeons, asking if training identity matching (i.e., if A then A) is a necessary condition for symmetry. In two experiments they provide strong evidence that identity matching is not a necessary condition and, in so doing, provide additional support for Urcuioli’s (2008) theory of pigeons’ equivalence class formation. In the Daniels, Laude, and Zentall (2014) paper, a procedure is presented for efficiently exploring pigeons’ ability to make emergent transitive inferences within a series of trained A > B > C > D > E > F relations. Transitive relating is demonstrated on test trials in which their pigeons prefer B over D, B over E, and/or C over E; stimuli never previously presented together and both of which had served as Sþ and S-. The special issue also includes a technical article that will be of interest in particular to those conducting relational research with humans. Gerard, Mackay, Thompson, and McIlvane (2014) describe computer algorithms they have developed for creating balanced distributions of stimuli in matching-to-sample preparations. These programs can facilitate the important task of determining when and where stimuli will be presented so as to avoid idiosyncratic preferences for stimuli or position. Relational Frame Theory Hayes and colleagues (e.g., Hayes & Brownstein, 1984; Hayes, Brownstein, Zettle, Rosenfarb, & Korn, 1986; Wulfert & Hayes, 1988) were inspired by the work of Sidman and others (e.g., Catania, Matthews, & Shimoff, 1982) whose findings shed new light on a behavioral approach to complex verbal behavior, including that often seen in clinical settings. Since that time, the importance and development of emergent stimulus relations for understanding language and complex cognition have been extensively explored within Relational Frame Theory (RFT; Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001), with much of the latter work being led by Dermot Barnes-Holmes and

EDITORIAL: STIMULUS-STIMULUS RELATIONS colleagues. This work is ever evolving and pulling in other fields of science including evolution science. In the present issue of JEAB, the Perspectives on Behavior article by Hayes and Sanford (2014) discusses the increasing recognition among evolutionary biologists that learning and behavior are centrally important in understanding natural selection. For example, Hayes and Sanford note that behavior puts members of a species in contact with new environments (e.g., the migration of man from Africa) and with new selection pressures (e.g., new pathogens, predators, and prey), which, in turn, yield ontogenetic and phylogenetic change. The authors suggest that evolutionary biologists are increasingly integrating general process learning theories into their evolutionary models, while suggesting that evolutionary processes can modify learning processes to the specifics of the niche. As an example of the latter, Hayes and Sanford develop an argument, contrary to Skinner (1981) but in accord with Wilson (2007) that human cooperation preceded language, and when combined with building-block abilities such as social referencing and perspective taking, prepared humans to acquire symmetric relational learning, a fundamental component of referential logic and what would later become human language. The argument makes for interesting reading, as does the authors’ perspective on strategies for further integrating behavioral research into evolution science. Beyond mutually entailed symmetry, RFT views stimulus equivalence performance as resulting from a particular kind of learned stimulus relation: correspondence or sameness. While correspondence is viewed as foundational, it is but one of a number of stimulus relations (e.g., opposition, comparative, hierarchical, causal) to which humans learn to respond. Learning to behave relationally is learning to behave appropriately to specified or derived relations. For example, once a child learns the comparative relations more than and less than and is then told that a dime is more than a nickel, she will be able to report that a nickel is less than a dime. The child is not responding to the physical properties of the dime or the nickel (in which the nickel is larger), but to the arbitrary relation between them. As noted earlier, in verbal contexts relations among stimuli are typically arbitrarily applied; the sound “dog” does not in any way resemble a

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dog, and the same is true of the symbolic relations between words and virtually every object, action, or relation with which those names (tacts) are related as equivalent. A learned generalized repertoire of a specific form of arbitrary relational responding (e.g., relating object and name of object as same) is referred to as a relational frame. Once learned, a relational frame can be arbitrarily applied to any set of stimuli. For example, we can arbitrarily apply a frame of comparison to any two (or more) objects. Take a look at any two objects and choose which one is better, more valuable, or aesthetically pleasing. The decision could be difficult, but forced to do it, we bet you could. Now let’s say you are allowed to keep only one object. The relational frames in which these two objects exist will affect which one you choose. Interestingly, this choice will likely be affected by frames other than “costs more” because these stimuli are in a variety of other frames such as “hard to get” or “more sentimental.” In RFT, Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche (2001) define relational frames as relational operants with three properties; the first is mutual entailment. In a frame of coordination (equivalence), if A ¼ B then the language-capable human will demonstrate, without additional training, the entailed B ¼ A relation. Likewise, in a frame of “less than,” learning A < B entails that B > A. A second property of relational framing is combinatorial entailment; that is, if A is related in some way to B (e.g., same, less than) and C is related in the same way to B, then it is entailed that B and C should be related as well (e.g., if A < B and B A). The first two of these properties, RFT holds, are acquired through multiple exemplar training. In other words, relating is, at first, explicitly taught but multiple exemplar training establishes that relating, as a generalized operant, is appropriate regardless of the formal properties of the stimuli to be related. As with many other types of generalized responding, the appropriate contexts in which relational responding will occur is affected through a process of discrimination training. One of the differences between relational framing and other more discrete responses is that the types of relational responding that will occur are based on arbitrary aspects of the environment. Sometimes they are clear, but in more real-life situations they are subtle. For

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example, some “dangerous” situations are clearly dangerous, whereas others may be hard to explain why they feel wrong. Nevertheless, aspects of these environments set the context to respond to stimuli in accordance with particular relational frames. In the present special issue, Walsh, Horgan, May, Dymond, and Whelan (2014) present additional evidence for the utility of multiple exemplar training as one means by which emergent relating behavior may be acquired. Their research explores the utility of a computer program (the Relational Completion Procedure) designed to efficiently establish emergent relating behavior in typically developing and language-delayed children diagnosed with an autism-spectrum disorder. Consistent with RFT, the multiple-exemplar-based training program proved effective in establishing frames of coordination. The third property of relational framing, transfer of function, is one that has important implications for understanding how stimuli acquire functions in the absence of direct training. For example, Roche & Barnes (1997) demonstrated that abstract stimuli indirectly acquired sexually arousing functions via derived equivalence relations with visually presented sexual stimuli. As another example, Augustson and Dougher (1997) found that avoidanceevoking functions can also transfer through stimulus equivalence classes. The clinical implications of such work for understanding phobias and anxiety disorders are obvious. In addition to the transfer of emotion-eliciting and avoidance-evoking functions among members of stimulus equivalence classes, investigators have demonstrated the transfer of virtually every other stimulus function, including contextual control (Gatch & Osborne, 1989; Kohlenberg, Hayes, & Hayes, 1991), conditional control (Roche & Barnes, 1996; Wulfert & Hayes, 1988), discriminative control (Barnes & Keenan, 1993; deRose, McIlvane, Dube, Galpin, & Stoddard, 1988; Roche, Barnes-Holmes, Smeets, Barnes-Holmes, & McGeady, 2000), conditioned reinforcement and punishment (Greenway, Dougher, & Wulfert, 1996; Hayes, Kohlenberg, & Hayes, 1991), ordinal functions (Green, Sigurdardottir, & Saunders, 1991; Lazar, 1977; Lazar & Kotlarchyk, 1986; Wulfert & Hayes, 1988), and instructional control (McGuigan & Keenan, 2002). Taken together, these studies provide convincing evidence that

virtually any Pavlovian or operant function can transfer to or be indirectly acquired via derived stimulus relations. There are two contexts that influence relational responding: a relational context and a functional context. These two contexts are under control of different aspects of the environment. Specifically, the relational context guides the repertoire of relating behavior that will be brought to bear on the stimuli themselves, whereas another context guides the functions of the stimuli. This is of critical importance because it suggests that both aspects of stimuli (relational context and functional context) can be separately affected. Thus, in all training or clinical situations, one should think about whether their goals are to expand a relational network or to affect the functional response that occurs. In many skills-acquisition contexts, such as education, the trainer might be most focused on the relations being trained; whereas, in many clinical situations, in addition to being concerned with the particular relations that are being built, the therapist might be notably concerned with the functional context under which a response occurs. For example, the person with posttraumatic stress disorder may never forget the trauma, but he can get more skilled at experiencing the fear in a different functional context that does not foster avoidance. Researchers working within the RFT tradition have developed numerous and complex laboratory models of the many varieties of relational frames and they have outlined how relating behavior might be applied to relational frames themselves (e.g., Stewart, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, & Smeets, 2002). For example, in the present issue of JEAB, Slattery and Stewart (2014) develop an RFT preparation that models hierarchical class formation, a topic of great interest to cognitive-developmental psychologists. In hierarchical classification, one must relate in specific ways classes of stimuli. Pomeranian, for example, is a stimulus class containing all dogs that share the genetics of this inbred strain. Pomeranian, as a stimulus class, is hierarchically classified as subordinate to the class dogs, which contains Pomeranians and all other canines. Within this frame of hierarchical classification dogs includes Pomeranians but the entailed relation is that Pomeranians are members of the class dogs. Slattery and Stewart establish two contextual stimuli to control

EDITORIAL: STIMULUS-STIMULUS RELATIONS relational frames of “members of” and “includes” and establish a class (like dog), subclass (like Pomeranian) and a super-ordinate class (like animals). In these two contexts, derived responding and transformation of function, as predicted in RFT, are demonstrated. Their findings illustrate a working RFT model of hierarchical class formation and suggest a means by which these relational networks might be established. These findings are important beyond their ability to predict; they have applied implications. One of the key tenets of RFT is that, once established, relating or relational responding is maintained in part by coherence or sense making (Hayes, Fox et al., 2001). Coherence itself is learned and occurs when a relational frame results in derived relations that are consistent with previous learning. For example, given an unambiguous relational network such as A > B >C, it is easy to derive, that is, it makes sense, that A > C and C < A. Given an ambiguous relational network, however, such as A > C and B > C, it is more difficult or impossible to derive coherent relations between A and B without more information. That is, it cannot be determined whether A ¼ B, A > B, or A < B. Ambiguous relational networks abound in natural environments, yet individuals routinely derive entailed relations often in idiosyncratic ways. These idiosyncratic derivations are sometimes called thinking patterns or cognitive errors by cognitive theorists and commonly given causal status. Within the field of clinical psychology, cognitive models took the lead from behavioral ones because behavioral models could not well account for the “cognitive” events that were occurring within clinical disorders. The idea that idiosyncratic thinking patterns can be problematic is not in itself objectionable from a behavioral perspective, but the critical scientific task is to understand the history and contexts that result in both those thinking patterns and their functional role in a behavioral system. This is the issue Quinones and Hayes (2014) sought to address. In Experiment 1, participants first learned two 3-stimulus networks (A1 < B1, A1 > C1 and A2 > B2, C2 < A2) and were then presented test trials to see whether they classified the combinatorial relations (B1–C1 and B2–C2) as Same or Different and as > or C1 and therefore B1 different

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from C1), it is not derivable in the second network. When participants were required to specify the B–C relation in network 2 as either Same or Different they responded idiosyncratically. Those who chose Different, also consistently chose B2 as either > or < C2. Those who classified the B–C relation as Same responded inconsistently In Experiment 2, nonarbitrary multiple exemplar pretraining was used to bias participants to respond either Same or Different to ambiguous combinatorial relations. As in Experiment 1, those biased toward Different consistently chose a comparative relation between B2 and C2 while those biased toward Same responded inconsistently. These findings support the importance of history and coherence in establishing patterns of responding to ambiguous relational networks and suggest a behavioral model of cognitive styles and errors. Practical Implications of RFT The application of RFT has been vast, ranging from clinical interventions for psychological disorders (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 2012) to organizational behavior management (Hayes, Bond, Barnes-Holmes, & Austin, 2006). For the purpose of this brief editorial, we will confine our discussion of the translation of RFT to clinical phenomena. The examples that have been provided thus far have generally dealt with an external stimulus that has a behavioral function. These are useful examples but private stimuli such as private speaking (one form of cognition) or broader responses such as “anxiety” are of critical importance for much of the work done in applied psychology (Friman, Hayes, & Wilson, 1998). Cognitive and emotional events are also stimuli and are members of equivalence classes. Our dog-phobic child will feel anxiety when she hears a dog bark in the distance. The presence of this emotion (anxiety) similar to thoughts such as “that dog might be dangerous” are likely setting events or establishing operations in this situation, but the important part is that these private events have influence on the child’s actions. In most western cultures feelings of anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and so on have been labeled (are in an equivalence relation with) bad, disorder, sick, flawed, etc. By virtue of combinatorial entailment, if a person (I) experiences such feelings, I can become equivalent with all of those negative descriptors. The resulting derived stimulus relation is “I am flawed,” or “something is wrong.” In

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this way, private events themselves can acquire functions for verbally competent humans that are not inherent in the events themselves. Dogs may experience fear, but they do not feel badly about themselves for being so. Given the derived aversive function of certain private events, it is natural that individuals would engage in behaviors to escape and avoid them. Such attempts collectively are called emotional avoidance and can include a variety of topographically different but functionally related behaviors, such as substance abuse, social alienation, intimacy difficulties, compulsions, anger problems, panic attacks, prolonged depression, etc. (Hayes, Luoma, Bond, Masuda, & Lillis, 2006; Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). From this perspective, emotional avoidance is the cause of many clinical disorders, but relating is at the core of this avoidance. Traditional cognitive-behavioral approaches to treating clinical disorders, like anxiety, assume that cognition is causal—disordered thoughts must be identified and replaced by rational thinking if the anxiety disorder is to be ameliorated (Hoffman, Asmundson, & Beck, 2013). RFT suggested a different (behavior analytic) and data-based approach to addressing clinical disorders, an approach embodied in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT, Hayes et al., 2012). Readers of JEAB may be largely unaware that ACT has over the last 15 years become one of the more popular empirically-based clinical treatment modalities. This popularity is based on empirical research findings that support ACT as a treatment for several psychological disorders including depression, psychosis, substance dependence, and chronic pain (Hayes, Levin, Plumb-Vilardaga, Villatte, & Pistorello, 2013). ACT differs from other cognitive and behavioral therapies in that it makes few direct attempts to alter private experiences. Rather, it largely takes a contextual approach to altering their function (i.e., transformation of function). Consider the feeling most of us experience when riding a roller coaster or when skiing a steep downhill run. The private physiological experience is quite similar to the feeling described as “anxiety” by the dog-phobic child but the function of that private stimulus is very different. Where the feeling (in a frame of coordination with anxiety, bad, I am, intolerable, disorder, etc.) has an escape/avoidance function, the same feeling, experienced in a

different context, has an approach function and is in a frame of coordination with fun, thrilling, exciting, etc. Observing that the same private stimulus can have a different behavioral function depending on context, the ACT therapist seeks to provide a new context in which a different relational frame may be brought to bear on anxiety (for example) and the other stimuli with which it is in a frame of coordination. For the client suffering from an anxiety disorder, thoughts of anxiety-provoking stimuli (e.g., saying something stupid in a public forum) are in a frame of coordination with being in a public forum and saying something stupid. The anxiety eliciting function of the real event is transferred to the thought of the event, such that merely thinking about anxiety-provoking situations can produce physiological arousal and distress. Anxiety can have the same effect as a dangerous event, a judgmental thought can function like a real criticism, and the fear of failing can function like actually failing. One process by which the behavioral functions of private events are altered is called “defusion” (Hayes et al., 2012). In broad terms, defusion techniques attempt to alter the functional context in which the stimulus (internal or external) occurs. Defusion techniques employed by ACT therapists are designed to alter clients’ perspectives of private experience by helping them to observe them from a distant or detached perspective, to see them as they actually are (as instances of private behavior) rather than as the function-transformed events that their verbal processes have rendered. In this special issue of JEAB, an interesting analog study is presented by Luciano et al. (2014). Their study tested the effectiveness of a defusion intervention for reducing experimentally induced generalized avoidance. Compared to two control interventions, a brief, verbal defusion protocol suppressed avoidance responding to a conditioned and derived set of aversive stimuli in all participants. Notably, by and large, only the functional context under which the derived relations occurred was targeted in the brief clinical intervention. The participants were taught how to experience their reactions in a verbal context of “just noticing” and cognitive distance. The relational responding still occurred, but it occurred in a different verbal context that transformed the function of stimuli that had previously evoked

EDITORIAL: STIMULUS-STIMULUS RELATIONS avoidance behavior. This back-translational study exemplifies the behavior analytic tradition of subjecting clinical interventions to experimental analysis. Summary Standing as we are, knee-deep in the stream of the scientific study of relating behavior, we can see clearly the advances made over the last 75 years in basic research laboratories. The recognition and study of equivalence relating was a watershed moment, and the theories that this discovery has generated have driven important research lines for several decades. If you add in the applied work that utilizes equivalence or RFT, or is based on the science, the impact of this work is nothing short of phenomenal. Although our feet are wet, there is a good deal of work left to be done. Behavior analysis as a field has traditionally not embraced complex human cognition as a research focus and that has been costly—costly to behavior analysis and to the larger fields of psychology and human development, because the demonstrated ability of behavior analysts to bring a rigorous scientific analysis to language and cognition has been largely unrecognized and undervalued. Recent advances in the study of emergent symmetry and in building complex relational networks promise new insights, new theoretical advances, and further impact through socially significant translation. Research on transformation of stimulus function illustrates that one context controls the types of relational responding that occur, and a second affects the transformation of stimulus function. These two contexts have proven to be experimentally and clinically important, and this instance of translation is a model for science informing the practice. Existing theories, particularly RFT, are not without controversy (e.g., Palmer, 2004) and this is as it should be in any vibrant area of research and debate. However, RFT, as a coherent and generative behavior-analytic theory of language and cognition, has helped us to ford further into the stream, getting us on our way to addressing important issues on which behavior analysis has traditionally been silent. Theories are bent by data, and the same will be true of existing theories of relational responding. It is our hope that this special issue will stimulate the collection of more data, data that will help to bend our theories to conform to the contours of nature.

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