Exploring the Single-Trial-Type-Dominance-Effect in the IRAP: Developing a Differential Arbitrarily Applicable Relational Responding Effects (DAARRE) Model

Abstract

The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) has been used as a measure of implicit cognition and has been used to analyze the dynamics of arbitrarily applicable relational responding. The current study uses the IRAP for the latter purpose. Specifically, the current research focuses on a pattern of responding observed in a previously published IRAP study that was difficult to explain using existing conceptual analyses. The pattern is referred to as the single-trial-type dominance effect because one of the IRAP trial types produces an effect that is significantly larger than that of the other three. Based on a post hoc explanation provided in a previously published article, the first experiment in the current series explored the impact of prior experimental experience on the single-trial-type dominance effect. The results indicated that the effect was larger for participants who reported high levels of experimental experience (M = 32.3 previous experiments) versus those who did not (M = 2.5 previous experiments). In the second experiment, participants were required to read out loud the stimuli presented on each trial and the response option they chose. The effect of experimental experience was absent, but the single-trial-type dominance effect remained. In the third experiment, a different set of stimuli than those used in the first two experiments was used in the IRAP, and a significant single-trial-type dominance effect was no longer observed. The results obtained from the three experiments led inductively to the development of a new model of the variables involved in producing IRAP effects—the differential arbitrarily applicable relational responding effects (DAARRE) model—which is presented in the General Discussion.