exploring the development and dismantling of equivalence classes ...

The Psychological Record, 2006, 56, 83-103

EXPLORING THE DEVELOPMENT AND DISMANTLING OF EQUIVALENCE CLASSES INVOLVING TERRORIST STIMULI

MARK R. DIXON, RUTH ANNE REHFELDT, KIMBERLY R, ZLOMKE, and ASHTON ROBINSON Southern Illinois University

The present paper describes 2 studies that present a conceptual interpretation and experimental findings involving the developing and dismantling of equivalence classes consisting of terrorist stimuli. In the first study. 8 United States citizen participants were trained to match nonterrorist stimuli to American and terrorist images. Afterwards, participants were tested for derived relations between American and terrorist stimuli. Results revealed all participants had a high probability of making predictable responses across culturally framed stimuli during a pretest (i.e.. match American to American and terrorist to terrorist), yet after training, made fewer culturally controlled responses during the posttest. The second study examined the acquisition rate and resulting equivalence test performance of 7 United States citizen participants who received training with 3 sets of visual stimuli that consisted of (a) terrorist, (b) mixed terrorist/American, and (c) neutral (flowers) images. Most participants acquired the relations involving the terrorist stimuli in fewer trials and scored with higher accuracy during testing when compared to their performance on the other two sets (mixed terrorist/American, flowers). Implications for various theories of stimulus equivalence are discussed.

The September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States World Trade Center Towers have forever changed the perception of security in America, The psychological ramifications from these events and this loss of national security have been devastating to all Americans, not only those who were directly involved in the attacks (Pyszczynski, Solomon, & Greenberg, 2003). Significant increases in posttraumatic stress have been reported (Meisenhelder, 2002; Thobaben, 2002) which are resulting in more persons across the country who are now seeking psychoiogical services of clinicians. Many case reports are now surfacing of persons who have been tempted to commit suicide (Duggal, Berezkin, & John, 2002), increase their need for human contact (Alper, 2002), and seek religious Address all correspondence to Mark R, Dixon, Behavior Analysis and Therapy Program. Rehabilitation Institute, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL 62901. (E-mail; mdixon@siu,edu).

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affiliations as a form of coping (Meisenhelder, 2002). Recent evidence also shows that there has been a 4.9% nationwide rise in antidepressant prescriptions compared to the 6 months prior to the attacks (KettI & Bixler, 2002). Future epidemiological studies will continue to reveal the longer-term ramifications of these terrorist attacks on the psychological well-being of our culture at large. With the veil of security removed from American culture, the United States government has repeatedly instructed its citizens to have an increased awareness for those persons who may look suspicious of committing a terrorist act. Because the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were of Middle Eastern descent, a natural consequence of this governmental instruction has been for persons of Middle Eastern heritage to appear as suspicious—leading to an overgeneralization of this race as potential terrorists and the false arrests of many law abiding American citizens (msnbc.com. 2002). What is even more unfortunate in the long run for the American society is that members develop a prejudice, bias, or stereotype towards an entire race of people when only small numbers of individuals within that race correspond correctly with the perceived attitude. Social psychologists have developed large-scale theories regarding the possession of hypothetical constructs such as racial prejudices, stereotypes, and biases towards members of unfamiliar groups (Brown, 1988); yet these theohes fail to account for how such "stereotypes" arise or how they can be, if they can be, overcome. If researchers could instead conceptualize a prejudice or stereotype as a simple stimulus class, then perhaps experimental investigations of class development, maintenance, and disruption could account for an otherwise immeasurable psychological construct. Behavior analytic investigations may yield promise. Prejudice can be viewed as a feeling or opinion created about someone or something that does not come from direct experience or contact with the target. In a sense it is stimulus overgeneralization. Prejudice is built into humans through their verbal abilities and language (Hayes, Nicolls. Masuda, & Rye, 2002). Humans use prejudice as a means of categorizing others according to similar features. Participation in verbal networks maintains these prejudicial views and allows them to transfer to other targets as well. For example, ethnic origin is often perceived in terms of the food, style of dress, and social customs of a particular group of people: An individual who has his or her wallet stolen while traveling through Mexico may develop a negative attitude toward persons of Mexican nationality. This attitude may transfer to Mexican food, dress, and artwork, as well as generalizing to persons who are not of Mexican nationality but have similar physical features. The behavioral processes underlying the establishment and extension of such stereotypes can be explained by Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a behavior analytic model of language and complex behavior (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001), According to RFT, Mexican food, art, customs, dress, and people of Mexican nationality are related by a frame of coordination or sameness

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for the individual in this example. Any explicit function established to one stimulus in that network will transfer to the other stimuli in the network, without the person having direct experiences with those stimuli (see Dymond & Rehfeldt, 2000). This process is not unlike the negative views towards persons of Middle Eastern descent that have come about since the terrorist attacks on the United States. In the laboratory, the establishment of relational networks and the transfer of function across those networks is typically established in the following manner: Subjects are explicitly taught conditional discriminations between a stimulus and at least two other stimuli (i.e., A1-B1 and A1-C1), Verbally competent subjects then typically demonstrate the emergence of derived or untrained relations between those stimuli (i.e,, B1-A1, C1-A1, Bl -C1, C1 -Bl). When a particular function is established to one member of that network (i.e,, training subjects to emit one space bar press in the presence of B1), that function will transfer to the other stimuli in the absence of direct training (i,e,, A1 and C1 will now occasion one bar press). Thus, all of the stimuli in the network affect responding similarly, although the subjects did not have direct experience with all of them (see Dymond & Rehfeldt, 2001). The relational network paradigm has been previously used to study prejudice in the laboratory. During the mid to latter part of the 20th century Northern Ireland was faced with great societal "Troubles." Watt, Keenan, Barnes, and Cairns (1991) employed a matching-to-sample procedure to study the formation of stimulus networks in the social context of "The Troubles" in Northern Ireland, Subjects received conditional discrimination training between Catholic names and nonsense syllables, and between those nonsense syllables and Protestant symbols. In the testing phase of the experiment two Catholic names and one Protestant name served as comparison stimuli and the Protestant symbols used previously in training were presented as the sample stimuli. Five of the twelve Northern Irish Catholic and all six of the Northern Irish Protestant participants failed to demonstrate derived relations between the Catholic and Protestant names or symbols (Watt et al,, 1991). These findings suggest that a social context and preexisting stimulus relations in that context may interfere with or override experimentally trained relations in the laboratory. Similar research on the importance of which preexisting relations among stimuli may have on the formation of culturally opposing stimulus classes in the laboratory has also been investigated using sexually related words and culturally specific slang descriptions of sexual genitalia (Plaud, Gaither, Franklin, Weller, & Barth, 1998). These authors also found that class formation in the laboratory can be hindered by the subject's preexperimental history: in their study the subject having a history of experience with sexually explicit words. Together, these and other studies (e.g., Plaud, 1995; Plaud, Gaither, Weller, Bigwood, Barth, & von Duvillard, 1998) suggest that researchers must be aware of and understand the impact of preexperimental experience on laboratory attempts at stimulus class formation.

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Some historical relational networks may be so strong in individuals' repertoires that attempting to introduce new contingencies fo alter the relations may be ineffective. This may very well be the case for many Americans who, after experiencing the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, have come to relate persons of Middle Eastern descent as equivalent to terrorists. Although we are constantly reminded that ''not all Middle Eastern persons are terrorists" or that "Islam is a peaceful religion" these verbal stimuli may be less effective in altering our relational responding now compared to prior to September 11, 2001, Although previous research has repeatedly shown the effects of a priori networks on experimental preparations, none have attempted to cast the issue experimentally using the current culturally significant stimuli of terrorism and persons of Middle Eastern descent. Doing so would perhaps bridge the conceptual perspective of Relational Frame Theory (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001), the basic research findings of preexisting stimuli and experimental stimulus class formation (Plaud, 1995; Plaud, Gaither, Franklin, et al., 1998; Watt et al., 1991) and the growing social concern of social categorization and terrorism (Dumont, Yzerbyt, Wigboldus, & Gordijn, 2003) that has emerged in a post-September 11th United States of America. Therefore, the purpose of the present paper was to further investigate prejudice from an experimental perspective. We examined the degree to which American college undergraduate participants would have difficulty forming a relational network consisting of a combination of Middle Eastern words and terrorist and American images. We also examined the ease in which these same participants could form a relational network consisting of all terrohst images and compared it to a control or neutral set of stimuli that had little if any extraexperimental history associated with them. Experiment 1 Method Participants Eight college undergraduates participated in this institutionally approved project for course extra-credit. All participants were born in the United States and were either African American or Caucasian. Participation in the entire experiment took approximately 2 hours. Setting, Apparatus, and Stimulus Materials All experimental conditions took place in a 10-foot by 10-foot room equipped with a personal computer and other experimental apparatuses. All experimental procedures took place using an IBM-compatible personal computer that was programmed in Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 by Kimberly ZIomke. Stimuli used in Experiment 1 consisted of 15 graphical images approximately 2 inches by 2 inches. A set of stimuli (i.e,. A, B, C, D, and E) consisted of three stimuli, yielding five sets of three members each. Figure 1 displays the 15 stimuli used in this experiment. The A stimuli

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Stimulus 1 Stimulus 2 Stimulus 3

Islam

Afghanistar

A Stimuli

B Stimuli i, A

C Stimuli

D Stimuli

E Stimuli Figure 7. The stimuli used in during Experiment 1.

Arab

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consisted of the words "Islam," "Afghanistan," and "Muslim." The B stimuli consisted of images of Osama bin Laden, Mohamed Atta, and an Islamic tank and warrior. The C stimuli consisted of images of the United States presidential seal, the United States flag, and the Statue of Liberty. The D stimuli consisted of images of an American Airlines airplane, a group of camels in the desert, and the World Trade Center Twin Towers. The E stimuli consisted of images of a piece of apple pie, a hot dog, and a baseball diamond. Procedure The initial instructions verbally given to each participant were: You are going to see four images presented on your screen. Your job is to choose one of the three images on the bottom of the screen by clicking on it with the mouse. There will be parts of the experiment where feedback is not given. The computer is still keeping track of your responses so continue to do your best. Sometimes when you are correct you will receive one point. Incorrect responses will not result in any points. Please try to earn as many points as you can. The more points you earn, the quicker you will finish. Do you have any questions?

The experimenter answered any questions by repeating relevant sections of the instructions. After the experimenter answered any questions, she left the room. Phase 1 (Pretest). A 36-trial pretest was conducted to serve as a control condition to examine each participant's preexperimental history of relating certain stimuli together. Pretest trials consisted of 18 B-C (terrorist images to American images) and 18 C-B (American images to terrorist images) trials where the first letter in this notation represents a single member of the set of stimuli that was presented as a sample stimulus while the second letter represents two of the three member set of stimuli that were presented as comparison stimuli. The third comparison stimulus presented on a B-C trial was one randomly selected member of the D stimulus class (airplane, camel, or World Trade Towers), and the third comparison stimulus presented on a C-B trial was one randomly selected member of the E stimulus class (apple pie, hotdog, or baseball). This test was conducted without any reinforcement, or in other words, on extinction. Phases 2 and 3 (A-B I A-C Training). The A-B phase consisted of training the A-B relationship, or matching a sample stimulus from the words "Islam," "Afghanistan," or "Islam" to the three comparison stimuli (terrohst images). The A-C phase consisted of training the A-C relationship, or matching a sample stimulus from the words "Islam," "Afghanistan," or "Islam" to the three comparison stimuli (American images). Each of the A-B and A-C training phases consisted of blocks of 18 trials each. To advance to the next training phase a criterion of 90% (16 correct responses out of 18 trials within one block) needed to be met. Phase 4 (Mixed training). After criterion was met in both the A-B

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and A-C training phases, the participant progressed into a mixed training phase. This phase consisted of 36 intermixed A-B and A-C triais. Criterion for completion of this phase was 90% (32 responses correct out of 36 triais within one block). Phase 5 (Posttest). The posttest consisted of 108 intermixed trials. Thirty-six triais were identical to those presented in the pretest, 36 additionai trials of B-C and C-B relations were aiso presented without the additional D or E comparison stimuius. During these 36 additional triais ail three members of the comparison class were presented as possible response options. The remaining 36 triais tested for symmetrical responses with B-A and C-A triais. Prior to the first thai of the test the participant viewed the following instructions via the computer monitor: You will no longer receive feedback following your responses. Continue to do the best you can. The computer is recording your score. The experimenter thoroughiy debriefed each participant after the completion of the posttest. Experiment 1 Results Table 1 displays the number of blocks of training trials to reach mastery criterion for aii training phases. For A-B and A-C training, a score of 16 correct or better out of an 18-trial block was deemed as meeting Table 1 Number of Blocks of Training Trials to Reach Mastery Criierion in Experiment 1 Participant Number 8 9 11 12 13 14 15 16

A-B Training Blocks 12 5 2 3 5 2 4 4

A-C Training Blocks 1 3 2 2 7

2 4 2

Mixed (A-B 8. A-C) Training Blocks

1

2

1 1 1 1

3 1

Note. Maslery criterion was 16/18 correct for A-B and A-C and 32/36 correct for mixed.

criterion. For Mixed A-B / A-C training, a score of 32 correct or better out of a 36-triai biock was deemed as meeting criterion. All participants were able to meet criteria for each type of training. A-B training took anywhere from 2 to 12 blocks of trials, A-C training 1 -7 blocks, and Mixed 1 -3 blocks. Figure 2 shows the average response latencies compared across A-B training trials and A-C training trials for all participants in the experiment. Longer response latencies were emitted for the A-C training trials which presented the Middle Eastern words as samples and the American images as comparisons as compared to the A-B training trials which presented the Middle Eastern words and the terrorist images. Participants 8, 11, 12,

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4,5-, A-B Training Trials A-C Training Trials

Participant Number Figure 2. Response latencies (seconds) for participants in Experiment 1 on A-B and A-C training trials.

13, and 14 displayed longer response latencies during A-C training trials than during A-B trials. The 3 participants who did not have higher average response latency during the A-C trials {Participants 9, 15, & 16) had only a slightly longer latency during A-B trials. The top panel of Figure 3 illustrates that participants consistently demonstrated extraexperimental relations during the pretest between the C stimuli (presidential seal, flag, and Statue of Liberty) and E stimuli {hotdog, apple pie, baseball) and images as well as between the B stimuli (Bin Laden, Atta, and tank) and the D stimuli (airplane, camel, or World Trade Towers). This was evident by the much higher than chance scores during the pretest for the stereotype specific D (terrorist images) and E (American images) stimuli as opposed to either of the other two comparison stimuli. The top panel of Figure 2 displays the percentage of correct responses made during the pretest, as well as the percentage of incorrect responses that were made for either a D or E stimulus. Of the 8 participants 6 (8, 9, 11, 13, 14, & 15) responded incorrectly with D or E stimuius choices during the pretest on at least 80% of aii possible trials. During the posttest, aii participants increased their percentage of correct responses over pretest percentages. Of the 8 participants, 4 (8, 11, 14, & 16) demonstrated equivalence responding with a 90% correct score on the combined triais posttest. Three additional participants (9, 12, & 15) increased their percentage correct by a minimum of 40%. Only 1 participant (13) responded at a chance percentage level (33%). The lower

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Participant Number Figure 3, Percentage of correct responses tor participants in Experiment 1 during the pretest and posttest. Incorrect responses to a D or E {culturally consistent) stimulus are plotted for comparison.

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two panels of Figure 3 display the percentage of correct responses during the posttest for just the 36 matched posttest trials that were identical to the pretest trials in their inclusion of a D or E comparison, as well as all 108 test trials combined. Although 5 of the 8 participants did continue to make responses errors to the D and E stimuli, the frequency of such responses dramatically decreased from pretest to posttest. Figure 4 displays the percentage of correct responses on symmetry (B-A or C-A) and equivalence trials (B-C or C-B). Again, all participants' errors during both test trial types were due to responses for the D and E comparison stimulus. Sym Test

^^m. Test

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Participant Number Figure 4. Percentage of correct symmetry relations (B-A & C-A) and equivalence relations (C-B & B-C) made by participants in Experiment 1 during the posttest.

Discussion of Experiment 1 The results of Experiment 1 illustrate that during the pretest. participants often responded in accordance with preexisting frames of coordination between American symbols and other American images, and Middle Eastern symbols and terrorist images. The majority of our participants opted to demonstrate the culturally consistent relations of coordination by selecting the "E" stimuli when given the "C" stimuli as samples, and the "D" stimuli when given the "B" stimuli as samples. These results are consistent with previous research, which has shown that subjects are most likely to demonstrate preexisting relations between culturally relevant stimuli rather than demonstrating a novel relationship involving those same stimuli (e.g., Plaud, Gaither, Franklin, et al., 1998). However, all participants in Experiment 1 emitted fewer errors during

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the posttest relative to the pretest. The present results suggest that programmed contingencies can to some degree override the preexisting relationships between stimuli and have important practical ramifications. Persons who possess racial or religious stereotypes often tend to inaccurately attribute persona! characteristics such as "good or bad," "right or wrong," "enemy or friend" to members of a certain race, religion, or ethnic background. It may be possible to reduce the effects of such prejudices by establishing relational networks between stimuli from that network and novel stimuli. For example, the individual who had a wallet stolen in Mexico might learn to relate stimuli from that verbal network to novel, positive stimuli, for example, coming into contact with a Peace Corps worker who is of Mexican heritage. At the same time, the experimental contingencies did not appear to completely override subjects' preexisting relations. Most participants still made errors during the posttest, and those errors were often a selection for a novel ("D" or "E") comparison stimulus. Thus, subjects' extraexperimental histories could not be completely dismantled. This was particularly the case for Participant 13, who required seven blocks of trials to demonstrate mastery criterion for A-C training, suggesting that she may have had the strongest extraexperimental frame of opposition between the Middle Eastern words and the American images. The longer response latencies during A-C training trials relative to A-B training trials that were observed with many participants may suggest that the Middle Eastern words (Islam, Muslim, and Arab) were more strongly related in extraexperimental frames of coordination with terrorist images than in frames of opposition with American images. In fact, pitting these two types of relational frames against each other could have possibly led to the low posttest scores that were observed for 4 of the 8 participants. Future research may wish to unravel this possibility more systematically by examining multiple stimuius sets containing stimuli that participate in extraexperimental frames of coordination and stimuli that are unlikely to participate in such extraexperimental frames of coordination. During Experiment 2 we attempted to further investigate the relative ease and difficultness of equivalence class formation using stimuli that were either (a) novel and neutral, (b) presumably extraexperimentally nonequivlant (i.e., those used in Experiment 1), and (c) presumably extraexperimentally equivalent. Experiment 2 Method Participants Seven college undergraduates participated in this institutionally approved project for course extra-credit. All participants were born in the United States and were either African American or Caucasian. Participation in the entire experiment took approximately 2 hours.

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Setl

Stimulus 1

Stimulus 2

Stimulus 3

Stirnulu? I

Stimulus 2

Stimulus 3

Stimulus I

Stimulus 2

Stimulus 3

A Stimuli

B Stimuli

C Stimuli Set 2

A Stimuli

B Stimuli

C Stimuli Set 3

A Stimuli

B Stimuli

C Stimuli Figure 5- The stimuli used in during Experiment 2,

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Setting, Apparatus, and Stimulus Materials All experimental conditions took place in the same room and used the same apparatus as Experiment 1. Stimuli used in Experiment 2 consisted of 27 graphical images approximately 2 inches by 2 inches. A set of stimuli {i.e., A, B, C) consisted of three stimuli, yielding three sets of three members each. Figure 5 displays the 27 stimuli used in this experiment. Set 1 consisted of nine stimuli of flowers. This "flowers" set depicted close up images of flowers that varied in color and shape. Set 2 consisted of nine stimuli that were a mix of terrorist/American images including a wheat field and combine, the World Trade Center on fire, Yosemite National Park's Half-Dome, Bin Laden, the United States flag, Islamic tank and warrior, the United States presidential seal, Mohamed Atta, and the Statue of Liberty. Set 3 consisted of nine stimuli that were terrorist images including Saddam Hussein, a Middle Eastern tank and soldiers, Yasser Arafat, the World Trade Center on fire, an airplane used in the September 11th terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden and other terrorist persons standing in a group, suspected American terrorist John Walker, an unnamed male terrorist, and a camel in a pen. Research Design All participants were exposed to the three sets of stimuli with order of presentation counterbalanced across participants. The following procedure was identical for al! three sets of stimuli. Procedure Phase 7 (Pretest). A 36-tria! pretest was conducted to serve as a control condition to examine each participant's preexperimental history of relating certain stimuli together. Pretest trials consisted of 18 B-C and 18 C-B trials where the first letter in this notation represents a single member of the set of stimuli that was presented as a sample stimulus while the second letter represents the three member set of stimuli that were presented as comparison stimuli. This test was conducted without any reinforcement, or in other words, on extinction. Phases 2 and 3 (A-B I A-C training). The A-B phase consisted of training the A-B relationship, or matching a sample stimulus from the images of flowers (Set 1), terrorist {Set 2), or mixed terrorist/American (Set 3) to the three comparison stimuli. The A-C phase consisted of training the A-C relationship. Each of the A-B and A-C training phases consisted of blocks of 18 trials each. To advance to the next training phase a criterion of 90% (16 correct responses out of 18 trials within one block) needed to be met. Phase 4 (Mixed training). After criterion was met in both the A-B and A-C training phases, the participant progressed into a mixed training phase. This phase consisted of 36 intermixed A-B and A-C trials. Criterion for completion of this phase was 90% (32 responses correct out of 36 trials within one block). Phase 5 (Posttest). The posttest consisted of 72 intermixed trials. Thirty-six trials were identical to those presented in the pretest, or trials

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of B-C and C-B relations. The remaining 36 trials tested for symmetrical responses with B-A and C-A trials. Prior to the first trial of the test the participant viewed the following instructions via the computer monitor: You will no longer receive feedback following your responses. Continue to do the best you can. The computer is recording your score. All participants repeated this identical procedure for the remaining two sets of stimuli. After completion of all three sets of stimuli, the experimenter thoroughly debriefed each participant. Experiment 2 Results Table 2 displays the number of blocks of training trials to reach mastery criterion for all training phases used in Experiment 2. For A-B and A-C training, a score of 16 correct or better out of an 18-trial block Table 2 Number of Blocks of Training Trials to Reacb Mastery Criterion in Experiment 2 Participant Number 20 28 29 30 46 47 48

A-B

Flowers A-C Mixed

1 2 3

2 1 4

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Terrorism A-C Mixed

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3 1 1

2

2

2 2

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1

1 1

2 2 2

4

2

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2 2

2

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1 3 1 1 1 1 1

Wofe. Mastery criterion was 16/18 correct for A-B and A-C and 32/36 correct for mixed.

was deemed as meeting criterion. For mixed A-B / A-C training, a score of 32 or better out of a 36-trial block was deemed as meeting criterion. All participants were able to meet criteria for each type of training. A-B training took anywhere from 1 to 7 blocks of trials across the various stimulus sets, A-C training 1-5 blocks, and Mixed 1-3 blocks. There were an overall fewer numbers of trial blocks to criterion exhibited by participants during their exposure to the terrorism stimulus set when compared to exposure to the flowers or mixed terrorism/American sets. Specifically, 4 participants (29, 30, 46, & 48) had the least blocks of trials to criterion for the terrorist set, 1 participant (20) had only fewer blocks when exposed to the flowers set, 1 participant (47) had equal numbers of blocks across all sets, and 1 participant had fewer blocks when exposed to the other two sets. Figure 6 displays mean response latencies emitted on training trials for all participants across the three stimulus sets used in Experiment 2. The top panel of this figure shows the comparison between response latencies on A-B trials and A-C trials for each of the three stimulus sets. No differences between these two trial types were found. The bottom panel of this figure shows the comparison between correct and Incorrect

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A-C Trials

o 0) o c

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Stimulus Set Figure 6. Response latencies (seconds) for participants in Experiment 2 on A-B and A-C training trials (top panel) and on correct and incorrect responses (bottom panel).

responses across both A-B and A-C training trials combined for each of the three stimulus sets. The average response latency was higher prior to an incorrect response than prior to a correct response for each of the three stimulus sets. Figure 7 shows the percentage of correct responses made by each participant during the testing conditions of Experiment 2. The top panel of this figure depicts pretest scores of each participant for all three stimulus sets. All 7 participants responded at chance levels (33%) for most sets. The bottom panel of this figure depicts posttest scores of each participant for all three stimulus sets. Of the 7 participants, 6 (20. 28, 29, 30, 46, & 47) were able to demonstrate equivalence, as measured by 90% correct

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Pre-Test

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Participant Number Figure 7. Percentage of correct responses for participants in Experiment 2 during the pretest and posttest for each of the three stimulus sets.

on any posttest, for at least one stimulus set. No participant was able to demonstrate equivalence for all three stimulus sets. The terrorist set equivalence test was passed by 6 participants (20, 28, 29, 30, 46, & 47). The flower set equivalence test was passed by 4 participants (20, 28, 46, & 47). The mixed terrorism/American set was passed by only 1 participant (30). Comparisons between sets revealed that all 7 participants had a higher posttest score on the terrorist set than on the mixed terrorism/ American set. The mixed terrorism/American set was the lowest posttest score for 5 of the 7 participants (20, 28, 46, 47, & 48).

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Discussion of Experiment 2 The findings of Experiment 2 illustrate that although none of the participants were able to derive the B-C and C-B relations for all three sets of stimuli during the posttest with 90% test trials correct or higher, 6 of the7 did so for at least one set. In every case, each participant was able to make more correct derived relational responses when exposed to the set of stimuli that consist of all terrorist images than when exposed to the set of stimuli that consist of a mixture of terrorist/American images. It is thus possible that the terrorist images existed in an extraexperimental frame of coordination for the participants. As a result, it was much easier for participants to form relations with the terrorist set relative to the other two stimulus sets. Previous research has shown that preexisting relations are more readily demonstrated in laboratory experiments than are relations involving novel stimuli (Plaud, Gaither, Franklin, et al., 1998). Our current data again appear to support those findings and extend them into the context of terrorism. The other sets of stimuli consisted of images for which participants had no previous history of relating. The flowers set, while attempting to serve as a control set of stimuli, may have been too arbitrary for participants to respond with a high degree of accuracy. It may have been more desirable to have used a control set of stimuli that included a variety of everyday objects. Also, the mixed terrorist/American set required the participant to make responses that may have conflicted with previously established relations; in fact, terrorist and American stimuli may have existed in an extraexperimental frame of opposition as suggested by the results in Experiment 1. In the present experiment participants were reinforced merely with points redeemable for nothing for making correct responses during training. The relative reinforcing value of the "points" may have not been enough to outweigh the relative aversiveness of selecting a comparison stimulus that was not consistent with an extraexperimental relational network during exposure to the mixed terrorist/American stimulus set. When faced with the choice between the small reinforcing value of a point or the larger reinforcing value of responding in accordance with an extraexperimental network, our participants' often selected to respond congruent with the culturally preestablished relational network rather than respond against that network and gain a mere point. Future research might wish to investigate the relative ease of deconstructing an extraexperimental relational frame by using varying sizes of reinforcers for correct responding. Using the mixed terrorist/American images stimulus set, one might instate experimental conditions whereby points are redeemable for (a) nothing, (b) course extra-credit, or (c) money and assess participants' relative training and testing performances. Most of the participants of Experiment 2 demonstrated higher response latencies for incorrect responses during training than for correct responses. This finding is consistent with previous research which has

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used response latency as a supplemental measure of the strength of emergent performances (see Dymond & Rehfeldt, 2001). Furthermore the longer latencies may suggest that participants were attempting to generate self-rules or strategies to aid in solving the conditional discrimination problem at hand (Rehfeldt & Dixon, 2000). A future study might attempt to have participants talk aloud throughout the experiment (see Hayes, 1986 for a description of this procedure). The amount of emitted verbal behavior that was produced on correct and incorrect trials could be compared to see if increases in frequency occurred on trials that the participant was unsure about the correct response. General Discussion Together, the present two experiments provide a possible empirical foundation of relational frame theory's application to prejudice as suggested possible by (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001). During the pretest in Experiment 1, it was shown that common words describing Middle Eastern culture were related in a frame of coordination with terrorism-type stimuli for all our participants. While it is debatable if the events that took place on September 11, 2001 caused this relationship to occur, we suggest that at a minimum it participated in altering the previously existing relational networks these words were in. In other words, there was possibly a transfer of function between words that describe an entire race of people and images that describe very few members of this population (Dymond & Rehfeldt, 2001). What results is a new relational network that has been constructed based on incorrect information. This finding alone is not necessarily novel and supports previous research on the transfer of function (Dougher, 1998), but it does tend to suggest how easily flexible stimulus functions are in a rather naturalistic and socially relevant context of terrorism. Furthermore in Experiment 1. we utilized a rather novel pretest and posttest that consisted of stimuli never presented in training. These D and E stimuli of Experiment 1 served as a continued baseline with which to measure the relative success or failure of the experimental training on overriding preexisting relational networks. Future research in the area of transfer of function may wish to incorporate similar pretest and posttest stimuli as a supplementary measure of the potential strength that preexisting stimuli networks may influence experimental training protocols. While the pretest results of Experiment 1 suggest that Middle Eastern words are readily related to terrorist stimuli over American stimuli, the training and testing performance of the participants suggests that programmed reinforcement contingencies can override the preexisting relational networks to some degree. These data are promising in that they provide empirical support towards a dismantling of an existing frame of coordination between stimuli and a reorganization of a new frame of coordination based on the derived transformation of functions between stimuli presented during training. However, it may be critical to identify

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salient enough feinforcefs to produce the desired effect. We believe future fesearch on this topic is necessary and may wish to incorporate more substantiai reinforcers than points on a computer screen. Perhaps verbal praise from a member of the prejudiced racial group couid be an option. Our procedure was very artificial in the sense that we attempted to have participants reiate stimuli such as George Bush to Osama Bin Laden, Relating these stimuli together does not necessarily teach an American person to deconstruct a frame of terrorism. However, by attempting to create very impractical frames of coordination between known terrorists and Americans, and being abie to do so somewhat successfully, it would suggest that such relations should be able to develop between unknown persons of Middle Eastern descent and pro-American type stimuli. In other words, our study attempted to demonstrate an effect with the most improbable extreme stimuli. Better success experimentally and practically might be made using less intense stimuli and also have greater external validity when attempting to understand how transfers of function occur that result in nonterrorist persons of Middle Eastern descent being labeled, named, or scorned as terrorists. The ease in which mastery criterion was met and derived relations emerged during Experiment 2 for the set of all terrorist stimuli suggests how quickly it is for stimuli sharing formal or functional similarities to be constructed into a relational frame of coordination. Reinforcement from the verbal community may strengthen these relations even more so. As our culture becomes increasingly concerned about the threat of terrorism, we believe that prejudice against Middle Eastern persons may become increasingly common. Awareness of prejudice from an empirically based behavior analytic perspective is the first step towards identifying ways to overcome it. The present two experiments have attempted to establish an experimental groundwork for a Relational Frame Theory interpretation of the formation and the possible dismantling of relational frames of terrorism and prejudice. While the present data suggest such an interpretation is possible, much more research needs to be conducted that addresses the development of stimulus networks involving prejudice. For example, unknown persons of Middle Eastern descent could be used as stimuli, rather than known terrorists, and participants could be taught conditional discriminations between them and pro-American comparison stimuli. Other persons of non-Middle Eastern descent, perhaps even white American males who have committed terrorist-type crimes could be used as stimuli and participants would be reinforced for correctly relating them to anti-American comparison stimuli. This type of procedure would hopefully teach participants that not all persons of Middle Eastern descent are terrorists, and not all white males are anti-terrorists. As a result, prejudice will be shown to not be a by-product of our culture, but rather a behavior, like all others, that can be shaped and altered through a manipulation of environmental variables. Although we have limited our outline of the formation of stimulus

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classes involving images of terrorism and the discussion of our obtained results to Relational Frame Theory, additional conceptualizations and data interpretations could be made via other theories of relational responding. For example, the "Naming Theory" (Home & Lowe, 1996) suggests that when one names a stimulus, it may be concurrently serving a discriminative function for relating matching and equivalence tasks. In the context of our experiment, a subject may have for example named the stimulus of Osama bin Laden, which supplementally functioned as an occasion to match that stimulus to other terrorism related stimuli. The naming theory also suggests that when the naming of a specific stimulus occurs, this process may be a mediating response that aids in generalization from the learning environment to other environments. In our experiment, the participants had a history of media exposure that certain persons are called, or named, terrorists. Those persons called terrorists were of Middle Eastern descent and that feature may be subsequently named in novel environments with novel stimuli—non-terrorists that are of Middle Eastern descent. Sidman's (1994) conceptualization of stimulus equivalence could also successfully describe the formation of stimulus classes and the transfer of stimulus functions involving images of terrorism, and may also explain our findings regarding the difficulty of class formation for many of our subjects when we used preexperimentally class inconsistent stimuli as we did in the mixed terrorism / American stimulus set. One advantage we see Relational Frame Theory having as a conceptual foundation for the present data is the theory's extensive description and growing empirical reports of the formation of other derived relations beyond equivalence or sameness which include, opposition, comparison, and distinction {Hayes, Barnes-Homes, & Roche, 2001). Future research interested in exploring the development and dismantling of stimulus classes with terrorist stimuli should construct relational networks other than equivalence as we have done in the present set of experiments. In summary, Relational Frame Theory has claimed to provide a behavior analytic account of prejudice, racism, and the formation of stereotypes (Hayes et al., 2002). To date, however, the relational frame conceptualization has lacked the empirical groundwork to support the claim. Our data lend evidence to the formulation of Hayes et al. (2002) and also provide for a starting place to investigate terrorism and prejudice from a behavioral perspective. As the threats to national security in the United States continue to grow, the time is now for behavior analysts to gain a greater understanding of the psychological ramifications for the individual society member and the homeland at large that is exposed to a new culture of terror.

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