3.5. Results

3.2. Setting and material

3.3. Design

82 Behavior Analysis

3.4. Procedure

designed for this Study is explained below.

type and number of repetitions of trials.

The setting used in Study 2 was identical to that employed in Study 1. The specific protocol

Similar to Study 1, a between subjects design was used to assess the effects of different perspective-taking protocols on the percentage of correct responses by both relational complexity and relation-type. The comparisons were made between the condition in Study 2 and the conditions in Study 1. The independent variable was the format of presentation in deictic frames. The measurement variables were: performance on relational complexity, on relation-

At the beginning of each session, participants were given the same instructions as Study 1. The experimenter read all tasks aloud from the perspective-taking protocol, the participant responded orally and the experimenter recorded each response. The order of the presentation of the different trials was identical to that employed in all conditions in Study 1. As in previous

This study was in keeping with the philosophy of the Vilardaga et al. [20] study, in which scenarios were created differently to each other. The trials were randomly selected from Condition 3 of Study 1, however the contexts were simplified in order to make it easier to respond under the control of deictic contextual cues (full protocol may be obtained by writing to the principal author). In addition, the exact terms I-You and Now-Then remained constant in line with Condition 1 of the previous study. Another key feature that differentiated this study from Condition 3 in Study 1 was that now a range of visual aids were employed to facilitate responding to all of the tasks contained within the protocol. This protocol was not presented in written form. The visual aids included pictures all different to each other, such as a bicycle, skates, a classroom, a theater and an ice-cream, amongst others. For example, if the experimenter said "I am at a bakery and you are at a sweetshop" the experimenter would have a picture of a bakery and the participant would have a picture of sweetshop. These modifications were made in order to involve the participant in more realistic contextual cues than in Condition 3. Seeing and holding the photos provided a more realistic representation than reading the sentence. In a similar fashion to Condition 1 and Condition 2, the actual locations

The length of this protocol was 18 trials, including trials containing all three frames and the three levels of complexity. Due to the differences between Condition 3a and Condition 3b in the previous study being non-significant, each trial of Study 2 consisted of two questions in line with Condition 1, in order to minimize the assessment times. After answering the first question, participants were asked the second question immediately. A correct response to a trial required that the participants answered both questions correctly. In line with Condition 3

conditions, no corrective feedback was provided for participants' responses.

of the visual aids remain fixed in reversed and double reversed trials.

In order to ensure the group was at the same level as participants from Study 1, before implementing the Condition, the participants were selected in accordance with the set of specific criteria mentioned above. Table 5 shows the final composition of the group.

Figure 1 shows the percentage of correct responses in terms of Condition and relational complexity. It can be seen from the figure that participants in Study 2 gave more correct responses than other Conditions in Study 1 on all levels of complexity (M = 100, SD = 0; M = 90, SD = 14.91; M = 26.67 SD = 14.91,on simple, reversed, and double reversed relations, respectively).



Figure 1. Mean percentage of correct responses for each condition in simple, reversed and double reversed relations.

then. As noted in the introduction, many studies have investigated the RFT approach to perspective-taking through the Barnes-Holmes protocol and, in recent years, the format of the original protocol has been modified in different studies. However, no published study to date has compared the performance in the original protocol with new perspective-taking protocols. This approach was adopted in the current study with a view to analyzing differences between the original Barnes-Holmes protocol and an adapted protocol which included different scenar-

Assessing Perspective-Taking in Children through Different Formats of Deictic Framing Protocol

http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.74539

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The results of both Study 1 and Study 2 indicated between-group differences with regard to variations in the format of protocol in terms of performance accuracy. Our ability to draw firm conclusions from these findings is limited because of the small sample size. Nonetheless, some interesting trends were apparent in the data, the most important being the role of stimuli variability between trials in the perspective-taking protocol. The difference in the number of correct responses for both relational complexity and relation type between conditions in Study 1 and Study 2, suggest the repetition of similar words developed by Y. Barnes-Holmes [5] could cause fatigue and lack of interest for the task. After listening to the words black chair and blue chair many times, participants become confused and lose interest. On the other hand, whereas Condition 3 in Study 1 or our deictic protocol in Study 2 did not need to repeat any trials, the Barnes-Holmes protocol of the Conditions 1–2 required more than 10 repetitions. These differences in number of repetitions requested by participants could be due to the fact that in the Condition 3 and Study 2, each trial presented a new and unique scenario, making the task less cognitively demanding. As mentioned earlier, for Conditions 1 and 2 in Study 1 some participants did not understand why the same trial was being done again. These findings are consistent with recent extensions of deictic teaching procedures which incorporate different and more naturalistic contexts with the purpose of bringing them in line with everyday

Although the findings from both studies are consistent with those of Vilardaga et al. [20] because a set of contextual cues that were systematically different to each other allowed participants to more reliably identify responses based on the underlying deictic relations, different changes were carried out to Study 2 to specifically fit a childhood population. The exact terms I-you and now-then remained constant in line with the original Barnes-Holmes protocol. Consistent with Lovett and Rehfeldt [22], evoking I-you framing response based on different personal deictic cues, required a more complex ability in derived relational responding. On the other hand, as discussed above from a RFT point of view [4], responding to temporal relations implies responding relationally to a situation where the relation is defined not by the physical properties, but by some other feature of the situation. Abstracting the physical dimension of concepts such as yesterday, tomorrow, or next week, requires highly verbal actions. For this reason, temporal frames of deictic protocols should be adapted to the verbal repertoire of children. These results support the need for adaptation of the assessment tools to the population targeted, raising

Limitations of the current study should also be considered. Sample size and number of trials by protocol are too small to establish strong conclusions. The protocols designed are part of a bigger research project in which children are being trained in perspective-taking via deictic relations. The protocols of the present study should be considered as screening tools, not

important issues that should be addressed in future research.

ios and adaptations of reversal cues.

discourse [18, 19, 22].

Figure 2. Mean percentage of correct responses for each condition by relation type.

Comparison of means between conditions in Study 1 and the condition in Study 2 were performed using non-parametric tests (Mann-Whitney U). According to relational complexity, the differences between Study 2 versus Condition 2 (p < 0.02) and Study 2 versus Condition 3b were significant (p < 0.05) in reversed relations. For all other comparisons, the differences were non-significant.

The results for relation type from all Conditions in Study 1 and Study 2 are presented in Figure 2. The number of correct responses in I-YOU/ HERE-THERE double reversals in Condition 2 was zero. The data indicated that participants in Study 2 achieved the best results for all relation types compared with Condition 1–3 in Study 1.

Non-parametric tests (Mann-Whitney U) revealed significant differences between Condition 2 and Study 2 in NOW-THEN simple relations (<0.02), in HERE-THERE reversed relations (<0.02) and in NOW-THEN reversed relations (=0.02); and between Condition 3b and Study 2 in NOW-THEN reversed relations (<0.05).

In connection with the number of repetitions of trials, it is also worth emphasizing that it was not necessary to repeat any trials for the condition in Study 2.
