Derived Relational Responding and Performance on Verbal Subtests of the WAIS-III

Abstract

Twenty-six monolingual and 46 bilingual college students were assigned to 2 groups on the basis of thei r performance on a complex relational task, an empirical model of instructional control (O'Hora, Barnes-Holmes, Roche, & Smeets, 2004). The subjects were then exposed to the vocabulary, arithmetic, and digit-symbol encoding subtests of the WAIS-ili. Subjects (N = 31) who successfully completed the relational task performed significantly better on the vocabulary and arithmetic subtests than those subjects (N = 44) who failed to do so. No significant differences in relational task performances of these 2 groups were obtained on the digit-symbol encoding subtest. In post-hoc statistical analyses, a low but significant correlation was obtained between the vocabulary and arithmetic scores and the percentage of correct responses emitted in 1 particular training phase of the relational task. Monolingual and bilingual subjects' performances were not significantly different in either the relational task or the WAIS subtests. These findings support the position that derived relational performances may provide a behavioral approach to human language abilities.Derived relational responding, and stimulus equivalence in particular, has been the focus of hundreds of laboratory studies (see Hayes, Sidman, 1994, for reviews). One reason for this interest was the suggestion by Sidman and Tailby (1982) that such relational responding could provide a behavioral model of semantic or symbolic relations. In particular, according to Sidman (1994):

Three Chronometric Indices of Relational Responding as Predictors of Performance on a Brief Intelligence Test: The Importance of Relational Flexibility

“…Most notably, the findings extend the work of O'Hora et al (2005) in demonstrating that performances on response-time-based similar/different and temporal relational tasks predict overall IQ as well as subtest scores. Furthermore, unlike O'Hora et al (2005, 2008, the current study employed three different response-time-based measures of relational responding (consistent trials, inconsistent trials, and difference-scores); interestingly, different patterns of significant correlations with IQ were observed across the measures.…”

“…The authors predicted that higher levels of proficiency on relational responding tasks would be a better predictor of performance on relationally rich subtests (such as vocabulary and arithmetic) than on subtests that are less relational (such as the digit-symbol coding subtest, which measures processing speed), and this is exactly what O'Hora et al (2005) found.…”

“…More recently, however, some researchers have suggested that derived relations may be relevant to our understanding of human intelligence, or at least those forms of human intelligence that are verbally based (see Hayes, . However, to our knowledge, only one published study has tested this idea (O'Hora, Peláez, & Barnes-Holmes, 2005). In that study, performances on derived relations tasks were compared with performances on a number of subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Third Edition (WAIS-III; Wechsler, 1997).…”

“…In the study by O'Hora et al (2005), only response accuracy was used as a measure of performance on the relational tasks. In contrast, the IRAP provides a measure of both the accuracy and the speed at which participants respond to the tasks.…”

A Relational Frame Training Intervention to Raise Intelligence Quotients: A Pilot Study

“…A possible lead worth pursuing is provided by the fact that several recent studies have found that skill in derived relational responding, including stimulus equivalence and derivation of multiple stimulus relations, correlates with performance on intelligence tests. For instance, O'Hora, Pelaez, and Barnes-Holmes (2005) found that participants who successfully completed a complex relational task performed significantly better on the Vocabulary and Arithmetic subtests of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS-III) as compared to participants who failed to do so. O'Hora et al (2008) found that accuracy on temporal (before/after) relational responding correlated well with performance on the Block Design subtest of the WAIS-III.…”