Assessment & Functional Analysis Flashcards

A clinician conducting an ACT functional assessment asks: 'What do you do when that feeling shows up?' This question is primarily designed to assess:

Answer: The client's behavioral response patterns and potential experiential avoidance

This question targets the function of the emotion — specifically what behavioral responses (often avoidant) are triggered when the private event occurs.

The Multidimensional Psychological Flexibility Inventory (MPFI) differs from the AAQ-II in that it:

Answer: Measures both flexibility and inflexibility across the six ACT processes

The MPFI assesses both the flexible and inflexible poles of all six ACT hexaflex processes, providing a more comprehensive flexibility profile than the AAQ-II.

When conducting a functional analysis of rumination in ACT, the therapist would MOST focus on:

Answer: The function rumination serves in relation to avoided emotional experiences

In ACT, rumination is understood functionally — it often serves as a control strategy to avoid direct contact with painful emotions, so its function is the primary focus.

A client undergoing ACT assessment completes the Valuing Questionnaire (VQ). A high score on the 'obstruction' subscale indicates:

Answer: The client is frequently blocked from acting on their values by internal or external barriers

The VQ obstruction subscale measures the degree to which clients feel blocked from their values-based actions, often due to experiential avoidance or rigid thinking.

In an ACT case conceptualization, identifying a client's 'core relational frame' serves to:

Answer: Clarify the verbal rules and self-narratives that maintain psychological inflexibility

Core relational frames are recurring verbal rules (e.g., 'I am broken') that, through cognitive fusion, rigidly organize behavior and maintain suffering.

Which scenario BEST illustrates the assessment of 'present-moment awareness' in an ACT context?

Answer: Observing how frequently the client's attention shifts to past or future concerns during the session

Present-moment awareness is assessed by observing how often a client is absorbed in ruminative or anxious thinking about the past or future rather than engaged with the current moment.

In ACT assessment, a client who says 'I can't be happy until my anxiety is gone' is demonstrating which process to target?

Answer: Experiential avoidance and fusion with a conditional rule about emotions

This statement reflects fusion with an 'if-then' rule that makes life contingent on eliminating internal experience — a core experiential avoidance pattern ACT directly addresses.