Verbal Behavior and Relational Frame Theory: Session 80 with David Palmer and Josh Pritchard

My original plan was to chat with Drs. David Palmer and Josh Pritchard about the distinctions between the Verbal Behavior, or traditional Skinnerian approach to language and cognition, and Relational Frame Theory.

Well, what happened was we had a technical glitch that prevented Josh from joining Dave and me, so for the first 15-20 minutes, it’s just the two of us… Fortunately, we figured out the problem, and then Josh was able to join the conversation. So think of this podcast as being presented in two acts.

What was great about this conversation was how amiably my guests were able to talk about these differing points of view. What was disappointing about this conversation… was how amiably my guests were able to talk about these differing points of view.

I’m kidding of course. And this is a topic I would like to return to from time to time. I would love to hear what you think about it, so please go to the show notes for this episode, or comment on your social media channel of choice.

We mentioned a handful of articles, and I’ve tried my best to provide links below. I may have missed one here and there, so let me know if you catch a reference that didn’t make it into the session notes. And while you’re at behavioralobservations.com, sign up for the newsletter, and you’ll get the show notes for subsequent episodes delivered directly to your email inbox.

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7 Comments

Celia Heyman

Amazing! Let’s “peel the onion” further! Looking forward to the next round!
Celia

Matt Hook

A lot of bodies being dug up in my head right now. Awesome episode! I liked your question about the leprechaun —that kicked off a great discussion about mediating events. I’m still getting into Palmer’s critique of RFT but I think that both sides are right in the points being made. I program with PEAK so it got me thinking about using multiple exemplars and how many are going enough, which exemplars are going to be sufficient. Dr. Palmer used the term “shortcuts”— figuring out where these shortcuts lie in bringing the mediating events together in the most efficient way possible, this feels like my job everyday. Dr. Josh’s description of the problem with research in this area makes sense but I sure hope someone out there is working on it; linking the molar perspective to the molecular one might be the difference between more efficient teaching and less efficient teaching, accounting for variability, and working our way around certain problems in stimulus control before they pop up in practice and hold our learners up from acquiring generalized responding. Or at least in how I’m understanding it— or I could be way way off. Anyhow, great fascinating stuff.

V ("Shaker") Chandrasekhar

I have several comments to make.

1. I thank my friend David Roth for sending me this link. I am also fortunate that Dave Palmer considers me a friend.

2. I am self taught in behavior analysis. The Quarter 2 issue of Operants 2018 has an article by me. This has a reply from Skinner to one of my letters. I wonder whether it was a 12 or a 14. It was clear to me that he didn’t read my letter carefully 🙂

3. I believe that there is order of the kind Skinner first discovered (i..e, functional relationship) only at the molecular level. (This leads to prediction and control.) The molar approach to me has been like losing a piece of jewelry at a dark spot but searching for it at a nearby well lit spot because it is more convenient to look there.

Regards.

Shaker

Matt Cicoria

Yes, this one was surprisingly popular. I thought it was too dense when I had the initial conversation… almost didn’t release the episode even. I’m pleasantly surprised that the audience likes this heavy conceptual stuff!

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