 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |  |  |
 |
Faculties & Departments
Department of Psychology
The Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP)
Hello and Welcome to the First IRAP Website
The IRAP was first conceptualised, designed, and programmed by Professor Dermot Barnes-Holmes, and has been developed and refined in collaboration with Dr. Yvonne Barnes-Holmes, Dr. Ian Stewart, Dr. Shawn Boles, and our students and colleagues.
Recent funding from a range of sources, totalling over 600,000 euro, has allowed Dermot and Yvonne Barnes-Holmes to establish the Implicit Cognition and Behaviour (ICaB) Research Group in the Department of Psychology at NUI, Maynooth. This group is currently exploring and developing the IRAP as a measure of implicit attitudes and beliefs.
What is the IRAP?
The most common method in the social sciences for obtaining information about what people think and believe involves asking participants to fill out relevant questionnaires and/or to conduct an interview or focus group. Such methods require that participants reflect on what they think and then report accordingly. Although clearly useful, questionnaires and the like may fail to pick up on so-called implicit cognitions, which are thoughts, feelings, and beliefs that participants may attempt to conceal, or of which they are not consciously aware, such as racial or sexual stereotypes.
The ICaB Research Group is currently exploring and developing the IRAP as a measure of implicit cognition. The IRAP was built out of Relational Frame Theory (RFT), a modern behavioural approach to human language and cognition (http://www.contextualpsychology.org/rft), the central postulate of which is that higher-cognitive functioning is composed of relational acts (Hayes, Barnes-Holmes, & Roche, 2001). Initial studies have shown that the IRAP may be used to measure relational networks or beliefs that are not readily accessible to the researcher or perhaps even the participant.
The basic assumption underlying the IRAP is that when individuals are asked to confirm and refute sets of opposing stimulus relations pertaining to a relevant domain, under time pressure, they will respond more rapidly to the relations that reflect their implicit beliefs than to those that do not. In a very recent study, for example, white students confirmed more rapidly that a white man holding a gun was safe rather than dangerous, but showed the opposite pattern for a black man holding a gun (i.e., dangerous rather than safe). Explicit questionnaire measures taken from the same students did not show a similar racial bias, thus indicating that the IRAP had picked up on an implicit racial stereotype not revealed by the questionnaires. In another recent research project, co-supervised by Dermot Barnes-Holmes, the IRAP was used to assess implicit attitudes to paedophilia. The results indicated that convicted child sex-offenders fail to respond to children as non-sexual on the IRAP, although they have undergone extensive treatment for the disorder and report on a questionnaire that children are in fact non-sexual.
A great deal of research is needed to develop and refine the IRAP as a valid and reliable tool for assessing and measuring implicit cognition, and many of the projects currently underway within the ICaB group are engaged in this work. Projects include research on the role of implicit beliefs in maintaining stigmatisation of minority and vulnerable groups, and in maintaining problematic health behaviours such as smoking and unhealthy dietary practices. In addition, some of this work will involve recording high-density event related potentials during exposure to the IRAP, in order to better understand the neural bases of implicit cognition itself.
This website provides an introduction to the IRAP research programme and access to the IRAP software and supporting materials.
The Implicit Cognition and Behaviour Research Group (February 2007).
Back row from left to right: Mr. Nigel Vahey (PhD Student), Dr. Geraldine Scanlan (Post-Doctoral Researcher), Dr. Yvonne Barnes-Holmes (Lecturer in Psychology), Ms. Fodhla Coogan (PhD Student), Ms. Catriona O’Toole (PhD Student), Ms. Laura Sánchez (Visiting Researcher from University of Almeria), Mr. Ian McKenna (PhD Student), Prof. Dermot Barnes-Holmes (Professor of Psychology). Front row from left to right: Dr. Andy Cochrane (Contract Lecturer in Psychology), Ms. Claire Keogh (PhD Student), Ms. Claire Campbell (PhD Student), Ms. Patricia Power (PhD Student), Ms. Claire Cullen (PhD Student).
- Download published and "in press" IRAP articles
- Download published research that was instrumental in leading to the development of the IRAP
- Download unpublished IRAP manuscripts
- Download IRAP workshop materials, conference presentations and posters
- Download IRAP software and supporting materials
- The web-based IRAP: What is it and how do I use it? (service suspended temporarily)
- List of individuals conducting research using the IRAP
- IRAP featured in Science Spin (a popular Irish science magazine)
- Click here for a pdf schedule for the IRAP Meeting 2010
- Click here for an interactive schedule for the IRAP meeting 2010