DERIVED RELATIONAL RESPONDING AS AN OPERANT - THE EFFECTS OF BETWEEN-SESSION FEEDBACK

Relational Frame Theory (RFT) views derived relational responding as a n overarching operant class of behavior. One approach to the analysis of derived relations from the RFT perspective, therefore, would be to examine systematically the effects of differential consequences on der ived responding. In Experiment 1, 15 undergraduate subjects were divid ed into three conditions (5 subjects in each condition). In each condi tion subjects were exposed to 11 sessions, and in each session they we re trained and tested for the formation of combinatorially entailed re lations. In Condition 1, no differential consequences were delivered a fter any session. In Condition 2, response-independent, positive feedb ack was delivered after each of the first five sessions (i.e., the exp erimenter said to the subject ''You are doing very well'') and respons e-independent, negative feedback was delivered after Sessions 6 to 10 (i.e., the experimenter said to the subject ''You are doing badly''). Condition 3 was similar to Condition 2, except that the first five ses sions were followed by negative feedback and the remaining sessions we re followed by positive feedback. The results showed that (a) deliveri ng positive feedback before negative feedback attenuated relational re sponding relative to the negative before positive feedback condition, and (b) delivering differential feedback produced more frequent relati onal responding relative to the no-feedback condition. Experiment 2 re plicated Conditions 2 and 3 of Experiment I, except that the positive and negative feedback was replaced by accurate and inaccurate feedback , respectively. During accurate feedback, subjects were told ''You're doing well'' if responding was above 50% correct and were told ''You'r e doing badly'' if responding was less than 50% correct. This was reve rsed for inaccurate feedback. Experiment 3 replicated Experiment 2 exc ept that the feedback was delivered automatically via the computer. Ex periment 4 involved a control whereby the test phase was unrelated to baseline training. The feedback delivered remained identical to that o f the previous experiment. Experiment 5 replicated Experiment 3, but t he feedback was precise in that, following the test phase, subjects re ceived a point for every correct response made. The results showed tha t, in general, derived relational responding was highly sensitive to t he response-contingent feedback and this responding was more frequent when precise feedback was used. Overall, the data are consistent with the suggestion that derived relational responding may be viewed as gen eralized operant behavior.