Beyond Skinner? A review of relational frame theory: A post-skinnerian account of human language and cognition by Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, and Roche.

Grayson read the first full book on Relational Frame Theory. He asked one question: is this new idea still Skinnerian?

He wrote a short review. He mapped each RFT claim back to familiar operant concepts. No new lab work was done.

The paper says RFT stays inside the Skinner tent. Derived relations are just operants shaped by many training examples.

So you can keep using Skinner’s verbal behavior terms and still teach frames like same, opposite, and more-than.

Merrill (2004) fires back. He says RFT has not given us a single new principle. He thinks old Skinner units already explain relational data.

Hatton et al. (2004) answer that claim. They agree no new principle is needed. They say relational operants are plain operants, echoing Grayson’s point.

Schoneberger (2025) ends the fight. He shows Skinner’s and RFT’s definitions do different jobs. Use Skinner when you track speaker reinforcement. Use RFT when you study how kids derive new words without direct training.

You do not have to pick a side. Teach tacts and mands with Skinner’s labels. Then run equivalence and frame drills to build flexible language. The papers show the two views fit together, not against each other.