ABSTRACT
Relational Frame Theory offers a behavioural account of human language acquisition that addresses the earlier criticisms of B. F. Skinner’s verbal behaviour theories. It sets out many empirically testable hypotheses that have driven an ever-expanding research interest over the past 20 years. At its heart, the theory seeks to explain the fundamental human ability to relate anything to anything. Humans are able to use language to relate anything to anything. This ability and the subsequent tendency to derive relations almost without knowing we are doing it sits at the heart of human language. Infant humans quickly develop the ability to make relations in a number of increasingly complex ways and are able to infer relations between stimuli without being directly taught. In this way, they benefit from a powerful form of indirect learning that adds another dimension to respondent and operant conditioning.
