Origins of Language

Question 1

What is language generativity?

Answer 1

the ability to produce sentences we have never said before and understand those never heard before.

Question 2

Who came up with verbal behaviour and what is it?

Answer 2

Skinner.
Behaviour (vocal or otherwise) that is reinforced and mediated by another person.
Cooperation idea; learned behaviour.

Question 3

What are the speaker and listener distinctions?

Answer 3

Speaker influences the environment by mediation of the listener.
Listener responds to another’s behaviour due to the convention of language.

Question 4

What does the convention of language allow?

Answer 4

Cooperation.

Question 5

What did Universal Grammar identify regarding verbal behaviour?

Answer 5

Skinner’s account couldn’t account for generativity - no direct learning history

Question 6

What are the methods of science?

Answer 6

Hypothetical deductive methods: top-down; test a hypothesis; often wasteful way of doing science.
Inductive: bottom-up; use patterns in the data to describe/create a theory; often has longer-term benefits.

Question 7

What is stimulus equivalence and who came up with it?

Answer 7

Murray Sidman
Emergence of equivalent relations between different stimuli - have the same effect on you/you respond similarly to them

Question 8

What scientific method did Sidman use?

Answer 8

Inductive

Question 9

What theory did Horne & Low (1996) create?

Answer 9

Naming theory

Question 10

What is naming theory?

Answer 10

In the same way we can mediate others through speaking, we can influence ourself by hearing our own speaking.
Reflexive process where you produce stimuli that you can respond to to mediate behaviour.

Question 11

What evidence goes against naming theory?

Answer 11

You don’t have to name things to get stimulus equivalence

Question 12

Who came up with Relational Frame Theory and what does it explain?

Answer 12

Hayes & Hayes (1989)
Language generativity

Question 13

How does RFT explain language generativity?

Answer 13

LG = the product of generalised relational responding (responding to relationship between stimuli in a generalised way).

Question 14

What is relational responding?

Answer 14

Relational responding = response to one stimulus in relation to other available stimuli.

Question 15

What is generalised relational responding?

Answer 15

Learned process of a particular unit (functional unit of a skill) that you can then generalise/apply more widely.

Question 16

What is generalised imitation/when has it developed?

Answer 16

GI has developed when the correspondence between the actions of the learner and actions of the model becomes the single stimulus property than controls the child’s response.
Behaviour is now controlled by the correspondence and extends to new topographies of behaviour.
GI = when a novel model evokes an imitative response without prior training.

Question 17

What are the 3 components of a relational frame?

Answer 17

Mutual entailment (ME)
Combinatorial mutual entailment (CE)
Transformation of stimulus functions (ToSF)

Question 18

What is mutual entailment?

Answer 18

Deriving a relation between two stimuli.
Refers to the ability to reverse relationships.

Question 19

What is combinatorial mutual entailment?

Answer 19

Deriving relations between two stimuli given the relation of each of them with a third stimulus.
Refers to combining relationships.

Question 20

What is transformation of stimulus functions?

Answer 20

Refers to how words get meaning.
Stimuli can have different functions/effects depending on contextual cues.
Functions are transferred between stimuli and you experience the physiological reactions of them.

Question 21

How does ToSF occur?

Answer 21

Through a generalised operant process.

Question 22

What can ToSF help to explain?

Answer 22

How pain can be brought to the present moment through words.

Question 23

How do relational frames develop?

Answer 23

Multiple exemplar exposure.
Throughout infancy children are presented objects with their names, sometimes object first, sometimes name first. Initially, word-object and object-word relations are explicitly trained, but after multiple training trials generalised relational responding emerges.

Question 24

What are the 9 families of relational frames?

Answer 24

1. equivalence/coordination
2. distinction
3. opposition
4. comparison
5. spatial
6. deictic
7. temporal
8. hierarchical
9. causal

Question 25

example of equivalence/coordination

Answer 25

a dog is the same as a hound

Question 26

example of distinction

Answer 26

a white dog is not the same as a brown dog

Question 27

example of opposition

Answer 27

a black dog vs a white cat

Question 28

example of comparison

Answer 28

this dog is bigger than that dog

Question 29

example of spatial

Answer 29

that dog is on the left, the other dog is on the right

Question 30

example of deictic

Answer 30

I am in front of that dog but behind the other

Question 31

example of temporal

Answer 31

I fed the dog before I fed the cat

Question 32

example of hierarchical

Answer 32

a dog is a sort of mammal, which is a type of animal

Question 33

example of causal

Answer 33

if the dog bites me, I will punish it

Question 34

What ancient greek root does “deictic” come from and what does the word mean? Examples?

Answer 34

Deîxis - “to show”. Refers to words that do not have formal properties but must be demonstrated as their meaning depends on who is speaking.
E.g., I, you, mine, me, yours, left/right, here/there.
To understand what they are referring to you have to know who is talking and where the person is.

Question 35

What ancient greek root does “deictic” come from and what does the word mean? Examples?

Answer 35

Deîxis - “to show”. Refers to words that do not have formal properties but must be demonstrated as their meaning depends on who is speaking.
E.g., I, you, mine, me, yours, left/right, here/there.
To understand what they are referring to you have to know who is talking and where the person is.

Question 36

Responding to deictic stimuli is the basis for human perspective taking and ToM skills; it explains how we discriminate our own spatio/temporal contexts from another person’s – what is this essential for?

Answer 36

self-awareness, prosocial behaviour, prejudice, and empathy.

Question 37

What do deictic stimuli not have?

Answer 37

Don’t have material dimensions, and they don’t change or degrade.

Question 38

How does language lead to psychological suffering?

Answer 38

Language allows us to bring threat/aversive stimuli into any moment. How we respond to these events determines suffering. Experiential avoidance leads to suffering.

Question 39

What is experiential avoidance?

Answer 39

try to alter the form, intensity, or frequency of private events.

Question 40

Why is experiential avoidance a bad strategy?

Answer 40

We don’t have the same control over our internal events as we do external. Exert effort over something we are unable to do.

Question 41

What is the rebound effect?

Answer 41

The more we try not to think about something, the more it comes back.