Dermot Barnes-Holmes

Chapter 16 – Teaching the Generic Skills of Language and Cognition: Contributions from Relational Frame Theory

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses how to teach the generic skills of language and cognition, focusing on the contributions from relational frame theory (RFT). From the perspective of RFT, arbitrarily applicable relational responding has three defining properties: mutual entailment, combinatorial entailment, and the transformation of stimulus functions. RFT employs the generic term “relational frame” to describe particular patterns of arbitrarily applicable relational responding. Furthermore, RFT suggests that the frame of opposition will emerge later than coordination because the combinatorially entailed relations within frames of opposition are frames of coordination. From the perspective of RFT, over-arching relational skills can be taught, and subsequent improvement in relational responding should lead to improved abilities in areas of cognition and language, as well as in intelligence in general. Establishing a manding repertoire is very important for children with language deficits, because it provides immediate control of the social and non-social environment and it facilitates the development of speaker and listener repertoires.