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During childhood and adolescence, it is crucial for individuals to develop appropriate emotional literacy, coping, and social skills. Programmes targeting youth well-being are increasingly being implemented in schools around the world. This study aims to describe the opinions of schoolchildren with low levels of subjective well-being in relation to "A Lust for Life Schools Programme," a universal well-being and resilience programme for primary school students in Ireland. The study also aims to illustrate participants' descriptions of emotions, coping skills, relationships, and well-being-related concepts, both before and after engaging in the programme through pre- and post-programme interviews. The journey of 20 primary school students (ages 10-13) who engaged in "A Lust for Life Schools Programme" was captured through semi-structured interviews conducted at three timepoints; pre-programme (n = 20), immediately post-programme (n = 8), and 12-16 weeks post-programme (n = 12). Thematic analysis was conducted on the interview data. Five primary themes were constructed: 1) programme feedback; 2) understanding feelings; 3) coping skills; 4) connection; and 5) illustrations of change. Findings suggest that "A Lust for Life Schools Programme" is an enjoyable and beneficial way for schoolchildren with low levels of subjective well-being to learn emotional literacy and coping skills in a social, interactive way.

Conversational agents or chatbots are a novel, highly accessible, and low-resource method of psychological intervention delivery. The present research aims to compare two brief chatbot interventions that delivered cognitive restructuring and defiision interventions, respectively. It was hypothesized that a defusion chatbot would lead to reduced cognitive fusion and decreased thought believability relative to cognitive restructuring and a nonactive control. Participants (N- 223; M age of 28.01 [SD = 10.29]; 47 identified as male, 174 as female, and 2 as nonbinary) were randomized into one of three conditions (defiision, restructuring, control), engaged for 5 days completing thought and mood measures pre- and postintervention. Sixty-two participants (M age of 25.98; SD = 8.647 years) completed measures again at time 2 (49 identified as female, 12 as male, and 1 as nonbinary). No statistically significant differences were observed among groups on believability of thoughts (F[2, 25] = .79,p = .47, [eta][p.sup.2] = . 06), negativity of thoughts (F[2,25] = 1.49, p= .25, [[eta].sup.2] = .11), discomfort associated with thoughts (F[2, 25] = .48 ,p = .62, [eta][p.sup.2] = .04), and willingness (F[2, 25] = 3.00, p = .07, r[eta][p.sup.2] = .19) to have negative self-referential thoughts. Moreover, substantial attrition of 72% was observed. Acceptability and usability of the chatbots employed are discussed as contributing toward the limited effectiveness of interventions and elevated attrition. Various recommendations are presented to support researchers and clinicians in developing engaging and effective chatbots. Keywords cognitive defusion * cognitive restructuring * chatbot-delivered interventions * negative self-referential thoughts, Negative self-referential thoughts are those self-relevant thoughts that are critical, derogatory, or self-defeating in nature (Clark & Rhyno, 2005). Cognitive models of psychopathology have long asserted the involvement of negative [...]

Generalized pliance is a pattern of rule-governed behavior characterized by having social approval as the main source of reinforcement. Recent research has found that generalized pliance is related to psychological inflexibility. As generalized pliance and psychological inflexibility are learned through social interaction, there may be differences in these processes across cultures. The present study examined adolescents' generalized pliance and psychological inflexibility with respect to cultural context and gender in a sample of adolescents (n = 508) aged 12-17 in the Irish and Colombian contexts. Generalized pliance was higher in the Irish context than in the Colombian context. In the Irish context, females reported greater generalized pliance and psychological inflexibility than males. In the Colombian context, females reported greater psychological inflexibility than males. Findings are discussed with reference to the need for longitudinal studies across different cultures to analyze developmental trajectories of generalized pliance and psychological inflexibility. Keywords Generalized pliance * Rule-governed behavior * Psychological inflexibility * Adolescents * Relational frame theory, Introduction Rule-governed behavior is an important verbal repertoire that allows individuals to respond to the world around them (Salazar, Ruiz, Florez, & Suarez-Falcon, 2018). Being able to generate, understand, and [...]

The current study assessed the impact of three brief interventions aimed at influencing implicit gender bias in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields. The reduction of this bias is a key consideration as it remains a major barrier to gender equality in STEM. The interventions (psychoeducation, exposure to positive counter-stereotypical exemplars and perspective-taking) were compared to a control group at two timepoints. Gender-STEM bias was assessed at the implicit level (via the Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure; IRAP) and the explicit level (via rating scales). Two hundred and ten adults (58.1% women) completed one of the four study conditions. Results indicated that implicit gender-STEM bias is malleable, at least in the short term. At Time 1, intervention groups showed higher levels of implicit pro-Women-STEM bias and lower levels of pro-Men-STEM bias than the Control group. Psychoeducation appeared most effective, followed by exposure to positive counter-stereotypical exemplars. Results from Time 2 presented a more complex picture of implicit bias change, as the control group exhibited an increased pro-Women-STEM bias that was unexpected. The implications of these findings are discussed in relation to refining the interventions, the malleability of gender-STEM bias and the measurement of implicit bias across contexts.

Acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) emphasizes values and behavioral commitments to help individuals achieve goals and manage emotions. This study evaluated the preliminary psychometric properties of the ACTive Values Wheel, a smartphone application-based psychometric instrument. ACTive provides a weighted and idiographic index of individuals' self-reported values-directed behavior. One hundred sixty adults participated on an individual basis to complete the ACTive Values Wheel and questionnaire measures of well-being, psychological distress, psychological flexibility, and valued living to assess the convergent, incremental, discriminant, and criterion-related validity of the ACTive Values Wheel. The ACTive Values Wheel showed evidence of convergent and criterion-related validity through significant positive correlations with existing measures of valued living, emotional well-being, and openness to experience, respectively. Likewise, discriminant validity was evidenced by a nonsignificant correlation with age. However, evidence of incremental validity over and above existing measures of valued living was not found. These findings provide preliminary support for the psychometric properties of the ACTive Values Wheel. Accounting for the methodological limitations of the study, the ACTive Values Wheel shows potential as an accessible and interactive measure of self-reported values-directed behavior that could be extended to other languages and cultural contexts. Keywords Values 'Measurement * Acceptance and commitment therapy - Values Wheel ? Mobile app * Committed action, Introduction Although valued living has been a target of psychotherapy for decades (Kirschenbaum, 2013), it has gained particular attention as a key outcome of acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT; Hayes, [...]

Stimulus overselectivity occurs when only one of potentially many aspects of the environment controls behavior. Adult participants were trained and tested on a trial-and-error discrimination learning task while engaging in a concurrent load task, and overselectivity emerged. When responding to the overselected stimulus was reduced by reinforcing a novel stimulus in the presence of the previously overselected stimulus in a second trial-and-error discrimination task, behavioral control by the underselected stimulus became stronger. However, this result was only found under certain circumstances: when there was substantial overselectivity in the first training phase; when control by the underselected stimulus in the first phase was particularly low; and when there was effective reduction in the behavioral control exerted by the previously overselected stimuli. The emergence of behavioral control by the underselected stimulus suggests that overselectivity is not simply due to an attention deficit, because for the emergence to occur, the stimuli must have been attended to and learned about in the training phase; but that a range of additional learning factors may play a role. (Contains 5 figures.)

The current study aimed to compare deictic relational responding and Theory of Mind (ToM) performances in 60 non-clinical young adults with a profile of high versus low social anhedonia in order to investigate a possible link between social anhedonia and ToM functioning. The results indicated that social anhedonic participants were less accurate than controls (matched on age, gender and general intellectual competencies) on ToM tasks (P less than 0.001) and on complex deictic relational responding (P=0.05). Accuracy on reversing deictic relations explains 52% of the variance of ToM performance (P=0.000). These findings support the RFT approach to ToM and suggest the critical role of social contact for the remediation of deficits. (Contains 2 figures and 6 footnotes.)

Cognitive perspective-taking has attracted considerable attention in the mainstream developmental literature, and is most commonly studied under the rubric of Theory of Mind. The current article reviews the levels of understanding of informational states that are believed to underlie cognitive perspective-taking from this conceptual framework. An alternative approach to perspective-taking from a functional behavioral framework is also presented. The concepts and methodologies behind this approach are driven by a modern behavioral account of human language and cognition known as Relational Frame Theory. As well as providing a brief summary of the core concepts of Relational Frame Theory, the article presents the relational frame account of cognitive perspective-taking. The empirical evidence in support of this view of perspective-taking as well as related research on false belief and deception are reviewed. The overlap between the Theory of Mind and Relational Frame Theory approaches to perspective-taking is discussed.

Although it employs a relatively small array of behavioral concepts and processes, Relational Frame Theory provides an account of how some of the most complex verbal events can be understood behaviorally and may be established systematically. In the current paper, the findings from a research agenda that has clear and widespread implications for educational practice are summarized. This exciting research initiative consists of studies in which both simple and relatively complex forms of derived relational responding have been targeted for assessment and remediation using interventions driven by Relational Frame Theory. A key theme running throughout the diverse content covered in this research program is the role of a basic understanding of relational responding in the teaching of critical cognitive or verbal repertoires in children. The article argues that identifying the core relational units involved in these cognitive skills, and targeting their fluid and flexible development with appropriate training, will lead to significant improvements in the methods used in many educational settings.