Relational Frame Theory: A Post-Skinnerian Approach to Human Cognition and Language

Human language and our use of it to communicate or understand the world requires deriving relations among events: e.g., if A=B and A=C, then B=C. Relational Frame Theory holds that such interpretations are at the core of any psychology of language and cognition. From a very early age, humans learn relations of sameness, difference, comparison, time, etc., and modify what they do in a given situation based on the relation derived from this to other situations and what they know about them.

This volume goes beyond theory and provides the empirical and conceptual tools necessary to conduct an experimental analysis of virtually all substantive topics in human language and cognition, both basic and applied. As the term "post-Skinnerian" suggests, this volume stimulates behavioral psychology by rethinking many of the specific theoretical formulations of its most prominent historical leader, especially in the realm of language and cognition, proposing new directions.