Contextual influence over deriving another's false beliefs using a relational triangulation perspective taking protocol (RT‐PTP‐M2)
A small colored cue, once part of an equivalence class, can unlock spontaneous false-belief answers in adults.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Guinther taught verbally-skilled adults a new protocol called RT-PTP-M2. The goal was to see if equivalence training could make people infer false beliefs.
First, adults failed simple false-belief tests. Then they learned to match pictures and words in equivalence classes. A colored square was added as a cue. After training, the cue alone let them derive what someone else wrongly thought.
What they found
Once the colored cue was part of the class, adults could suddenly state false beliefs they had never been taught. The cue acted like a switch: when it appeared, the right belief answer popped out.
The change was fast and spontaneous, showing contextual control over perspective-taking.
How this fits with other research
Guinther (2017) ran the same protocol for true beliefs. RT-PTP-M1 came first; RT-PTP-M2 simply swaps the belief type. Together they form a step-by-step curriculum.
Barron et al. (2019) and Dixon et al. (2021) took equivalence-based perspective training into children with autism. Their PEAK-T and PEAK-E programs show the method works across ages and diagnoses.
Stewart et al. (2013) and Perez et al. (2017) proved that arbitrary cues trained via equivalence can later steer relational responses. Guinther applies the same trick to false-belief tasks.
Why it matters
You can build perspective-taking without long role-play or social stories. Add a simple contextual cue to your equivalence sets, and the learner may suddenly infer what others think—even when it is wrong. Try it next time you run PEAK or any matching-to-sample program.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →Pick one color or shape, add it to your equivalence set, and test if the learner can now state what another person wrongly thinks.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The original relational triangulation perspective taking protocol (RT-PTP-M1; Guinther, ) was extended with a second training and testing module (RT-PTP-M2) showing contextual influence over derivation of another's "false beliefs" during an analog of the Sally-Anne test for Theory of Mind (Baron-Cohen, Leslie, & Frith, ; Wimmer & Perner, ) in verbally competent adults. Under the respective contextual control of experimental stimuli X2 and X3 , participants first learned through direct conditioning procedures that avatars A2 and A3 "behave the same way" towards target stimuli. Participants then made object discriminations under X2 according to the spatial perspective of A2 , who saw an initial target at a particular location but could not see that the target was later swapped with a second target; reporting the identity of the initial target was reinforced for participants. Among participants who had failed baseline testing, this directly trained "false belief attribution" repertoire was then spontaneously emitted by participants relative to the perspective of A3 under X3 during the final test for derivation. Other participants were able to derive false belief under X3 without the X2 attribution training. These results suggest the RT-PTP procedures were successful in causing X3 to acquire context-of-relating functions for exerting control over perspectival relational triangulation.
Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 2018 · doi:10.1002/jeab.480