Several gaps exist in the standardised assessment of pupils with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) in the Irish mainstream education context at the point of transition from primary to ...post‐primary school. These gaps may lead to a lack of adequate focus on the continuity of resources at this timepoint. The current study examined academic and social attainment in three cohorts of pupils in Ireland (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, ADHD, N = 12; Mild General Learning Difficulties, MGLD, N = 12; and typically developing individuals, N = 11). Four standardised measures were used in a non‐experimental design to assess cognitive attainment (Wide Range Achievements Test 4, WRAT‐4), learning competency and self‐concept (Myself as a Learner Scale, MALS; the Burnett Self Scale, BSS), and perceived control (Multidimensional Measure of Children's Perception of Control scale, MMCPC) across the three groups prior to transition to post‐primary school. Results indicated that the typically developing pupils performed strongest on attainment followed by those with ADHD and MGLD. While the latter two groups were weaker on attainment, neither group perceived of themselves as weaker. The results are discussed within the context of formal assessment for pupils with SEND in mainstream education and how these diverse outcomes may have implications for policy.
The key purpose of this article is to provide a comprehensive overview of the literature on perspective-taking from within mainstream psychology and behavior analysis. The primary focus will be on ...the behavior-analytic approach to perspective-taking, which is divided into what may be described as (1) traditional behavior analysis; (2) an area within behavior analysis that is concerned specifically with human language and cognition, known as Relational Frame Theory (RFT); and (3) an updated version of RFT that is used to provide the beginnings of a detailed and systematic account of the processes involved in perspective-taking abilities.
The current article outlines a behavior-analytic approach to the study of so-called implicit attitudes and cognition. The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP), the conceptual basis of ...which was derived from relational frame theory, is offered as a methodology that may be used in the experimental analysis of implicit attitudes and beliefs. The relational elaboration and coherence (REC) model provides a possible relational-frame account of the findings that have emerged from the IRAP. The article first outlines the research history that led to the development of the IRAP, followed by a description of the method. The REC model and how it explains a range of IRAP data are then considered. The article also outlines how both the IRAP and the REC model overlap with, and differ from, similar research found in the non-behavior-analytic literature.
Being able to coordinate the perspectives of oneself and others is likely to be helpful in educational contexts. For example, teachers need flexible social perspective taking to understand their own ...perspectives and those of their students. Evidence suggests that reading facilitates social perspective taking because it involves readers coordinating social perspectives. However, there is little evidence on actual flexible perspective taking in educational contexts. In the current research, we assumed that the presence of different spatial, temporal, and social cues with regard to (higher) educational contexts would affect flexible social perspective taking performances of prospective psychologists and teachers. Across two different studies, we employed relational frame theory and a within-subject design (n = 44 undergraduate students in Study 1 and n = 176 teacher education students in Study 2). We analyzed the data by Rasch-trees and general linear modeling. The results showed faster responding on flexible spatial and temporal social perspective taking tasks, involving a fictional college course in “English” rather than “statistics” (Study 1). In Study 2, the results suggested greater accuracy on flexible spatial and temporal social perspective taking tasks involving spatial rather than temporal relations (Study 2). The results shed some light on the integration of different approaches for research on understanding the relevance of flexible social perspective taking in educational contexts. Flexible spatial and temporal social perspective taking may be of benefit to both students in higher education and teachers in school education.
Psychology has benefited from an enormous wealth of knowledge about processes of cognition in relation to how the brain organizes information. Within the categorization literature, this behavior is ...often explained through theories of memory construction called exemplar theory and prototype theory which are typically based on similarity or rule functions as explanations of how categories emerge. Although these theories work well at modeling highly controlled stimuli in laboratory settings, they often perform less well outside of these settings, such as explaining the emergence of background knowledge processes. In order to explain background knowledge, we present a non-similarity-based post-Skinnerian theory of human language called Relational Frame Theory (RFT) which is rooted in a philosophical world view called functional contextualism (FC). This theory offers a very different interpretation of how categories emerge through the functions of behavior and through contextual cues, which may be of some benefit to existing categorization theories. Specifically, RFT may be able to offer a novel explanation of how background knowledge arises, and we provide some mathematical considerations in order to identify a formal model. Finally, we discuss much of this work within the broader context of general semantic knowledge and artificial intelligence research.
Different types of therapy explain psychopathology and the effects of psychotherapy differently. Different explanations are, however, not necessarily mutually exclusive. Based on the idea that ...functional and cognitive explanations are situated at different levels, we argue that functional therapies such as traditional Behaviour Therapy (BT) and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) are not necessarily incompatible with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT). Whether a functional and a cognitive therapy actually align depends on whether they highlight the same type of environmental causes. This functional‐cognitive perspective reveals various differences and communalities among BT, CBT and ACT.
The current article considers how the analysis of language and cognition in RFT may be conceptualized as a multi-dimensional multi-level framework (MDML) for understanding how simple units of ...analysis specified in RFT connect to more complex units, such as the relating of relational networks, which is seen as critical to narrative and story-telling. A brief outline of the framework is used to illustrate the importance of narrative in the treatment of human psychological suffering. In addition, the development of the concepts of
verbal functional analysis
and the
drill-down
are presented as examples of how the therapeutic relationship itself can be understood through the lens of the MDML and RFT more generally.
The current study aimed to assess the implicit attitudes of vegetarians and non-vegetarians towards meat and vegetables, using the Implicit Association Test (Iat) and the Implicit Relational ...Assessment Procedure (IRAP). Both measures involved asking participants to respond, under time pressure, to pictures of meat or vegetables as either positive or negative stimuli. Response latency data gathered from both the IAT and the IRAP discriminated at a statistically significant level between vegetarians and meat-eaters. Furthermore, both measures correlated with some features of the explicit self-report measure that was employed in the study. The implicit measures also provided similarly small but statistically significant increases in predictive validity over the explicit measures.
The current study compared the effects of an acceptance versus distraction rationale on coping with experimentally induced pain. Eighty participants were randomly assigned to one of five conditions: ...Full-Acceptance, Full-Distraction, Instruction-only-Acceptance, Instruction-only-Distraction and No-Instructions. Participants completed a simple matching task and were intermittently given the choice either to receive an electric shock and continue, or to avoid the shock and terminate the task. Only the Full-Acceptance strategy (that included experiential exercises and a metaphor) had a significant effect on task tolerance as measured by an increase in the number of shocks delivered post-intervention relative to baseline. In addition, the participants in both of the acceptance conditions showed lower levels of believability in that they were more likely to continue with the task even when reporting more pain. The results support the prediction that acceptance-based interventions work by undermining the behavioural-control functions of pain-related thoughts and feelings, and call for a systematic analysis of how metaphors and exercises work in analogue research.
The current research comprised two experiments that employed the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) as a measure of implicit racial attitudes. White Irish participants were exposed to ...blocks of trials that involved responding in a manner consistent with either a pro-white stereotype or a pro-black stereotype. In Experiment 1, participants completed the IRAP in either a public or private assessment situation. It was hypothesized that implicit pro-white stereotyping would decrease in the public context relative to the private context. The results, however, were not in accordance with this prediction. A second experiment was conducted to determine if requiring participants to respond in a public context but within a shorter timeframe would impact significantly upon implicit stereotyping. The results showed that a reduction in response latency significantly increased ingroup stereotyping. The findings appear to be consistent with the relational elaboration and coherence model.
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