The Avoidance and Fusion Questionnaire for Youth (AFQ-Y8) was developed to measure psychological inflexibility. Although the questionnaire is a well-known tool in clinical practice, its psychometric properties have not been widely investigated in the target population of children and adolescents. The purpose of this study was to investigate the factor structure and validity of the AFQ-Y8 ( N = 1,572, mean age 15.39 years, girls 51%) on a Hungarian sample. We also tested the invariance of the measurement model across two age groups (11-14 and 15-20 years old). Results confirmed the single-factor structure of the AFQ-Y8. Psychological inflexibility was also found to be positively related to emotional instability, externalizing, and internalizing problems. Furthermore, psychological inflexibility explained the variance of life satisfaction when personality dimensions, emotional, and behavioral problems were accounted for. Measurement invariance across age groups was partially supported. These results suggest that the AFQ-Y8 is a reliable and valid instrument for assessing psychological inflexibility in children and adolescents.

Stable tendency to perseverative thoughts such as trait rumination and worry can influence somatic health. The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between perseverative thoughts and somatic complaints, and the possible mediating effects of perceived stress, negative and positive affectivity in adolescence. Having an acute or a chronic condition was also assessed to be controlled for and to reveal their effects on symptom reporting. Three hundred and six adolescents from 7th to 12th grade with mean age of 16.33 (SD = 1.29) participated in the study. Mediation analysis suggested that impact of trait-like perseverative thoughts on complaints were mediated by perceived stress and negative affectivity. Having an acute condition had also an effect on symptom reporting through increased negative affectivity. Our results highlight that ruminations or worry as stable intrapersonal characteristics are relevant processes in health and can be potential targets in prevention programmes in adolescence.

According to dual-process models, implicit self-esteem (SE) is based on automatic selfassociations which can be measured with indirect techniques based on an associative conception of implicit cognition (e.g., Implicit Association Test; IAT). However, alternative theoretical proposals (e.g., Relational Frame Theory; RFT) propose that implicit SE might not be based on automatic self-associations, but on implicit propositional self-evaluations that can be captured only with nonassociative implicit measures (e.g., Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure; IRAP). In the present study, both reliability and validity of a new propositional measure of implicit self-esteem (Relational Responding Task; RRT) were assessed, and compared with the SE-IAT and with two self-report scales of self-esteem. In the first study, two alternative self-esteem RRTs (i.e., SE-RRT and RSE-RRT) were administered along with a SE-IAT and other scales, to assess reliability and validity issues. The results showed: 1) acceptable, though not optimal, reliability for both RRTs, 2) an adequate support for convergent validity, with significant correlations between implicit and explicit measures of SE, 3) the criterion validity was supported for the RSE-RRT (with significant correlations with all theoretically-linked scales), while only partially supported for the SE-RRT (with a significant correlation only with depression, 4) RRTs were not significantly correlated with impression-management and self-deception and 5) incremental validity of implicit propositional SE on depression, controlling for automatic SE associations and explicit self-esteem. In a second study, it was experimentally demonstrated that SE-RRT showed levels of "fakeability" similar to a classical implicit-self-esteem measure like the SE-IAT, and considerably lower than SE scales.

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