Deictic Frames Research Articles

Effects of deictic framing and defusion on the development of self-as-context in individuals with disabilities

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of a brief protocol based on Relational Frame Theory (RFT) that consisted of a defusion exercise in combination with perspective-taking interactions. The protocol was designed to alter verbal statements about the self by training deictic frames (i.e., I-YOU, HERE-THERE, and NOW-THEN) and presenting a defusion exercise. A pre-post design with a control group was implemented to evaluate the effects of the protocol on the rate of self-as-context and self-as-content statements. Individuals with disabilities served as participants and were assigned to each group based on the rate of self-as-content statements. Participants in the treatment group received the brief protocol, while participants in the control group engaged in a conversation about social skills. Following, participants completed an interview aimed to identify deictic relationships and negative statements about the self. Results demonstrated a significant effect in reducing the number of self-as-content statements and increasing the number of self-as-context statements for participants in the treatment group. Limitations of the current study are discussed, and future research is recommended.

How Teaching Perspective Taking to Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorders Affects Social Skills: Findings from Research and Suggestions for Practitioners.

Behavior-analytic practitioners working with individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) may be approached to incorporate perspective taking into a client's programming. Teaching perspective taking to individuals with ASDs has received attention in both the developmental psychology and, more recently, the behavior-analytic literature. The results of our review of the current evidence suggest that although perspective-taking repertoires believed to be related to social skills can be taught (false belief task performance, deictic frames), only directly teaching the social skills of interest (or applied perspective-taking skills) results in improvements in socially important behavior. The aim of this article is to provide practitioners with the current state of research on how teaching perspective taking affects social skills and to provide suggestions on how these findings might be incorporated into their practice.

Teaching foundational perspective-taking skills to children with autism using the PEAK-T curriculum: single-reversal "I-You" deictic frames.

We taught basic perspective-taking tasks to 3 children with autism and evaluated their ability to derive mutually entailed single-reversal deictic relations of those newly established perspective-taking skills. Furthermore, we examined the possibility of transfers of perspective-taking function to novel untrained stimuli. The methods were taken from the PEAK-T training curriculum, and results yielded positive gains for all 3 children to learn basic perspective taking as well as for 2 of the 3 to derive untrained single-reversal I relations following direct training of single-reversal You relations. All participants demonstrated a transfer of stimulus function to untrained stimuli after the single-reversal deictic relations had been mastered.

Establishing deictic repertoires in autism

Derived relational responding is an increasingly researched topic in the behavioral sciences. Deictic frames, among other forms of relational responding, have been found to underlie complex behavior, including perspective-taking. Researchers have developed procedures for training children, with and without disabilities, to demonstrate relational responding. Recent extensions of these teaching procedures incorporated more naturalistic contexts as an avenue for establishing these repertoires, but the efficacy of these new procedures for children with disabilities and the degree to which these improvements generalize have not yet been explored. The purpose of this study was to determine if relational repertoires could be established using newer, more naturalistic teaching procedures in children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder and to what degree improvements would generalize to another adult. Results indicated that all participants met criteria for mastery on all levels of relational complexity. Additionally, all three children demonstrated generalization of these repertoires to a novel adult following training to mastery. The results suggest that an intervention approach utilizing a Barnes-Holmes protocol in a story reading context was effective for establishing deictic repertoires in children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder.

An evaluation of multiple exemplar instruction to teach perspective-taking skills to adolescents with Asperger Syndrome.

The goal of this study was to investigate the effects of multiple exemplar instruction for teaching perspectivetaking skills to young adults with autism. Using a multiple probe design, participants were trained and tested using protocols evaluating the deictic frames of I-You, Here-There, and Now-Then. Generalization of perspectivetaking skills was evaluated using two standardized assessments designed to evaluate theory of mind, which were administered at pre and posttest. Generalization of perspective-taking skills to a more natural language situation was also assessed. Results showed the emergence of perspective-taking for all participants following multiple exemplar instruction, and varying degrees of generalization of perspective-taking skills to a natural presentation of social interaction were observed based on the complexity of the perspective-taking relation.

Assessing Deictic Relational Responding in Individuals With Social Anxiety Disorder: Evidence of Perspective-Taking Difficulties

The present study uses a relational frame approach (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche, 2001) to perspective taking for individuals suffering from social anxiety disorder (SAD). Perspective taking is conceptualized as the ability to relate events in accordance with the deictic frames of I-You, Here-There, and Now-Then. We hypothesized that the systematic underrehearsal of such behavioral repertoires, set off by the characteristic avoidance of social encounters in patients with SAD, could contribute to an impairment of perspective taking. We examined deictic relational responding skills in a sample of adults suffering from SAD and compared their performances with an age-matched sample of healthy peers. Participants with SAD performed significantly less accurately across all trial types, with group differences reaching significance for reversed trials (i.e., trials demanding a shift in perspective taking). Results indicated more pronounced difficulties at an earlier stage of perspective taking for those individuals diagnosed with SAD. Methodological shortcomings and implications for further research and training were discussed.

Análisis preliminar de un protocolo para la evaluación de marcos deícticos

<p style="text-align: justify;">El propósito de esta investigación es explorar diferencias en la ejecución de tareas deícticas presentadas en el protocolo de McHugh, Barnes-Holmes y Barnes-Holmes (2004a), en relación con variaciones procedimentales que consistieron en exponer a unos participantes al protocolo en un formato de entrevis- ta y a otros en una versión computarizada. La muestra estuvo conformada por 63 participantes entre 9 y 12 años, que fueron pareados por género, edad y nivel educativo, asignados a alguna de las condiciones de aplicación. Se calculó el número de errores cometido por cada participante y grupo de edad en cada marco deíctico y nivel de complejidad relacional, al igual que se estimó el efecto intersujetos mediante un ANOVA de dos vías con edad y versión (cara-a-cara y computador) como variables independientes y tipo de ensayo como variable dependiente. El efecto de la edad fue significativo para el caso de las relaciones invertidas ahora-antes y el de versión para las relaciones simples yo-tú y aquí-allá. En todos los grupos de edad se halló una tendencia a cometer mayor cantidad de errores en la versión computarizada en todos los tipos de ensayo. Los hallazgos se discuten en términos de confiabilidad del procedimiento y validez ecológica de las estrategias no automatizadas para la evaluación de relaciones de estímulo derivadas.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Palabras clave</strong>: Teoría de Marcos Relacionales, marcos deícticos, toma de perspectiva, procedimientos cara-a-cara, procedimientos automatizados.</p>

Use of second-person pronouns and schizophrenia

A masked analysis of videotaped assessments of people at high genetic risk of schizophrenia revealed that those who subsequently went on to develop schizophrenia used significantly more second-person pronouns. This was evident before diagnosis, at two separate assessments approximately 18 months apart. This supports the view that people who go on to develop schizophrenia may have an abnormality in the deictic frame of interpersonal communication - that is, the distinction between concepts being self-generated or from elsewhere may be blurred prior to the onset of a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

A Relational Frame Theory Approach to Understanding Perspective-Taking Using Children’s Stories in Typically Developing Children

Perspective-taking is a relatively new topic to the field of behavior analysis and has become of paramount interest for those examining complex behavior and cognition. Relational Frame Theory proposes that the emergence of deictic frames may be the basis of the ability to change perspective between such frames as I-You, Here-There, and Now-Then and that this ability arises from a history of reinforcement with multiple exemplars in which the speaker receives direct reinforcement for changing perspective between person, time, and place. Previous studies employing the Barnes-Holmes (2001) protocol showed that derived relational responding is involved in perspective-taking. The purpose of the present study was to develop a more naturalistic evaluation of the relational responding involved in perspective-taking. This study utilized a novel protocol in which the speaker was required to change perspective over the course of listening to children’s stories. Training using multiple exemplars was provided for deficits in the perspective-taking relations between I-Character, Here-There, and Now-Then. Results indicate that multiple exemplar training is effective in providing the history that will allow a child to respond appropriately to novel perspective-taking relations.

Verb Semantics Affects the Interpretation of Spatial Prepositions

Spatial prepositions, more specifically projective prepositions, such as in front of or behind can be interpreted in different ways. Their interpretation depends on the spatial perspective taken as the basis for determining the reference frame's orientation. In 3 series of placement experiments with German speakers, we examined whether the interpretation of projective prepositions in a motion context is affected by the verb used in a spatial instruction. Results suggest that verb semantics is a factor accounting for previously observed seemingly social-situational differences in the interpretation of projective prepositions. Specifically, the findings indicate that, relative to a car as reference object, the semantic aspect of motion interruption associated with some verbs leads to a higher proportion of deictic interpretations determined by the direction from which one is approaching the car. This verb effect on the interpretation of spatial prepositions can be explained by an activation of the temporal dimension through stop-implying verbs, which is integrated into the spatial situation model of the perceived dynamic scene making the deictic frame of reference more compatible. The experimental evidence also shows that verb semantics can account for previously unexplained cross-linguistic differences, and is related to patterns concerning the prepositional inventory of languages.

Assessing Perspective Taking in Schizophrenia Using Relational Frame Theory

The current study assessed deictic relational responding in people with schizophrenia. A perspective-taking task and a mental states attribution task were employed with a sample of 15 patients diagnosed with schizophrenia and 15 age-matched controls. Results revealed poorer performance of participants with schizophrenia in responding in accordance with deictic frames at the highest levels of relational complexity, while no difference appeared between the two groups on simple perspective taking. In addition, a significant deficit emerged on the mental states attribution task. Group effects remained significant after controlling for IQ. Furthermore, performance on complex deictic responding was a strong predictor of accuracy on the mental states attribution task in both groups, thus supporting the RFT approach to theory of mind. These findings suggest the relevance of conceptualizing mental states attribution in terms of relational responding for the understanding and remediation of deficits linked to schizophrenia.

Evaluación y entrenamiento de la toma de perspectiva: una propuesta analítica funcional

<p style="text-align: justify;">La toma de perspectiva difícilmente se desarrolla en los niños antes de los cuatro años de edad, según las investigaciones. Los protocolos usados hasta ahora están basados en situaciones hipotéticas con un alto nivel de abstracción y presentan un número limitado de ejemplos. Por esto, se desarrolló un protocolo para el entrenamiento de toma de perspectiva con base en situaciones reales, múltiples ejemplares y entrega de retroalimentación, manteniendo como constante las relaciones deícticas (YO-TÚ, AQUÍ-ALLÍ y AHORA-ENTONCES, simples e inversas). Bajo un diseño intrasujeto ABA, el protocolo fue efectivo para desarrollar las habilidades de toma de perspectiva en una niña de 3 años y 7 meses de edad, que no las presentaba al momento de la medición inicial. También, se analizan los datos correspondientes al número de sesiones requeridas para cada uno de los marcos y su complejidad a la luz de las investigaciones previas.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Palabras clave: </strong>toma de perspectiva, teoría de los marcos relacionales, marcos deícticos, entrenamiento en múltiples ejemplares.</p>

Reconstruction of the Proto‐Ch’olan demonstrative pronouns, deictic enclitics, and definite articles1

AbstractThis paper reconstructs the independent pronouns of Proto‐Ch’olan (Mayan), and traces the changes that took place in the descendant languages – Ch’ol, Chontal, Ch’olti’, Ch’orti’. The evidence points to three subsets of pronouns for Proto‐Ch’olan: *ha7‐, *ha7in‐, *nats’‐. The first is a descendant of the Proto‐Mayan pronoun base *ha7‐. The second is an amalgamated base with a grammaticalised demonstrative enclitic *+in. And the third is a grammaticalised positional root *nats’‘nearby’. Proto‐Western Ch’olan (Ch’ol‐Chontal) innovated the pronoun base *hin‐, attested in Classic Mayan texts as a possible diagnostic of Western Ch’olan vernacular speech, through contraction of Proto‐Ch’olan *ha7in‐, while Ch’orti’ innovated the pronoun base ha7ax through amalgamation and contraction of a deictic frame involving the pronoun base ha7 and the demonstrative ya7x‘there’ (ha7... ya7x>ha7+ya7x>ha7ax). Chontal exhibits the most change in its independent pronoun system, through its use of ergative person‐agreement markers instead of absolutive ones to inflect the pronoun base. And finally, in addition to providing support for the reconstruction of deictic enclitics (*+a‘here’, *+i‘there’, *+e‘over.there’), the paper proposes the origin of the Ch’olan definite articles in the Proto‐Ch’olan pronoun base *ha7in, and shows that these serve as yet another trait that distinguishes Eastern Ch’olan (*ha7ine) from Western Ch’olan (*hini).

Assessing deictic relational responding in social anhedonia: A functional approach to the development of theory of mind impairments.

Premack and Woodruff (1978) have proposed the term of Mind (ToM) to refer to one's ability to infer the beliefs, intentions and thoughts of others in order to explain and predict their behavior. Understanding how ToM operates has been the subject of debate for more than twenty years in cognitive psychology, but has only recently been studied in behavior analysis. Although the concepts of ToM do not lend themselves readily to a functional interpretation, some behavioral researchers working under the rubric of Relational Frame Theory (RFT) have attempted to develop a behavioral interpretation of the types of repertoires that constitute a ToM (McHugh, Barnes-Holmes, & Barnes-Holmes, 2004a). Relational Frame Theory is a modern behavioranalytic approach to the study of human language and cognition. At its core, this approach embraces the simple idea that language and cognition involve a number of limited but powerful behavioral processes, that allow individuals to relate stimuli or events in the world in new and untrained ways (as in generative language). A range of behavioral patterns emerge as a result of these relations between stimuli and these patterns are referred to as relational frames (see Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001). The simplest form of such relating can be referred to as coordination framing. An example of this type of framing might go as follows: a child could learn that the written word DOG is the same as the spoken word DOG according to the non-physical characteristics of these two stimuli while their physical form is very different. According to RFT, it is the uniquely human ability to learn to relate objects and events not based on their physical form but on external cues that allows for the generativity of human language. Among the different ways in which two stimuli can be related, Barnes-Holmes, Hayes, and Dymond (2001; see also Barnes-Holmes, McHugh, & Barnes-Holmes, 2004) have underlined the role of a specific class of relational responding termed deictic framing, which is assumed to underpin perspective-taking and, thus to be critically important with respect to the ability to infer the mental states of others. The three deictic frames involved in the acquisition of perspective-taking skills are the frames of I and YOU, HERE and THERE, and NOW and THEN, corresponding to interpersonal, spatial, and temporal dimensions, respectively. According to this view, perspective-taking skills emerge through a history of responding to questions such as > or >. Many phrases during daily discourse include these relational frames, even if substituted words such as the names of places, people and time are frequently used instead of the actual terms of I and YOU, HERE and THERE and NOW and THEN. Following the RFT approach to ToM, McHugh et al. (2004a) have proposed an RFT interpretation of the developmental levels of ToM described by Howlin, Baron-Cohen, and Hadwin (1999). That is, the authors suggested that levels from simple visual perspective-taking to the understanding of false-beliefs involve the ability to respond in accordance with deictic relational frames. Consider the following example of a well known false-belief task (Gopnick & Astington, 1988), in which a participant is asked what is inside a closed candy box. After responding, the candy box is opened and the participant discovers that the candy box did not contain candy but actually contained pencils. Then s/he is asked >. The RFT view of this task is that a correct response coming from the participant is underpinned by relational frames as follows: >. In order to study this interpretation, McHugh et al. …