A Systematic Review of Pliance, Tracking, and Augmenting.
We still lack the basic experiments that show pliance, tracking, and augmenting operate as distinct behavioral units.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Ama et al. (2017) hunted for experiments that prove pliance, tracking, and augmenting are separate behavioral classes.
They screened every ABA paper up to 2017 and kept only studies that tested these verbal rules with data.
What they found
Almost nobody had run the needed tests.
The review found too few experiments to say the three classes work differently.
How this fits with other research
Prasher et al. (2007) showed experimental functional assessments do guide better treatments.
Their meta-analysis proves we can test rule-governed behavior when we try.
Davis et al. (2023) later found 401 FCT thinning studies, yet most still skip the pliance-tracking check.
The gap Ama flagged is still open: lots of procedural papers, few clean experiments.
Why it matters
If we cannot prove these classes act differently, we risk writing vague goals like “follow instructions” without knowing which verbal process we are treating.
Next time you write a rule for a client, ask yourself: is this pliance, tracking, or augmenting, and how will I test it?
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Within relational frame theory, a distinction has been made between three types of rule-governed behavior known as pliance, tracking, and augmenting. This review examined whether there is support for the concepts of pliance, tracking, and augmenting in the experimental analysis of behavior; whether these concepts refer to distinct functional classes of behavior; and how these concepts have been operationalized in experimental (behavioral-analytic) research. Given that the concepts of pliance, tracking, and augmenting were first defined by Zettle and Hayes, we confined our review to studies published in or after 1982. Our results indicate that (a) experimental research investigating pliance, tracking, and/or augmenting is extremely limited; (b) it is difficult to determine the extent to which the concepts of pliance, tracking, and augmenting allow for relatively precise experimental analyses of distinct functional classes of behavior; and
Behavior modification, 2017 · doi:10.1177/0145445517693811