ACT Assessment & Functional Analysis 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: A clinician conducting an ACT functional assessment asks: 'What do you do when that feeling shows up?' This question is primarily designed to assess:
- The client's insight into emotional disorders
- The client's behavioral response patterns and potential experiential avoidance (Correct answer)
- The severity of the emotional experience on a Likert scale
- The client's cognitive appraisal of the emotion
Correct 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.
Question 2: The Multidimensional Psychological Flexibility Inventory (MPFI) differs from the AAQ-II in that it:
- Measures only experiential avoidance, unlike the AAQ-II which measures multiple constructs
- Measures both flexibility and inflexibility across the six ACT processes (Correct answer)
- Is designed exclusively for use with children and adolescents
- Assesses physiological flexibility rather than psychological flexibility
Correct 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.
Question 3: When conducting a functional analysis of rumination in ACT, the therapist would MOST focus on:
- The accuracy of the ruminative thought content
- The function rumination serves in relation to avoided emotional experiences (Correct answer)
- Identifying the cognitive schema underlying rumination
- Measuring how many minutes per day the client ruminates
Correct 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.
Question 4: A client undergoing ACT assessment completes the Valuing Questionnaire (VQ). A high score on the 'obstruction' subscale indicates:
- Strong commitment to personal values
- The client is frequently blocked from acting on their values by internal or external barriers (Correct answer)
- The client has difficulty identifying their values
- The client's values are in conflict with social norms
Correct 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.
Question 5: In an ACT case conceptualization, identifying a client's 'core relational frame' serves to:
- Provide a DSM diagnosis for insurance billing
- Clarify the verbal rules and self-narratives that maintain psychological inflexibility (Correct answer)
- Determine the client's attachment style for couples intervention
- Measure the density of the client's social support network
Correct 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.
Question 6: Which scenario BEST illustrates the assessment of 'present-moment awareness' in an ACT context?
- Asking the client to complete a thought diary between sessions
- Observing how frequently the client's attention shifts to past or future concerns during the session (Correct answer)
- Administering a structured interview about childhood attachment experiences
- Measuring the client's heart rate variability during a stress task
Correct 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.
Question 7: In ACT assessment, a client who says 'I can't be happy until my anxiety is gone' is demonstrating which process to target?
- Values confusion
- Experiential avoidance and fusion with a conditional rule about emotions (Correct answer)
- Deficient committed action skills
- Lack of present-moment awareness
Correct 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.
ACT Assessment & Functional Analysis 3
A clinician conducting an ACT functional assessment asks: 'What do you do when that feeling shows up?' This question is primarily designed to assess: