Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2014 Jan;45(1):83-101.
doi: 10.1016/j.beth.2013.09.001. Epub 2013 Sep 18.

The development and initial validation of the cognitive fusion questionnaire

David T Gillanders  1 , Helen Bolderston  2 , Frank W Bond  3 , Maria Dempster  4 , Paul E Flaxman  5 , Lindsey Campbell  4 , Sian Kerr  4 , Louise Tansey  6 , Penelope Noel  7 , Clive Ferenbach  8 , Samantha Masley  4 , Louise Roach  9 , Joda Lloyd  3 , Lauraine May  3 , Susan Clarke  10 , Bob Remington  2
Affiliations
Free article

The development and initial validation of the cognitive fusion questionnaire

David T Gillanders et al. Behav Ther. 2014 Jan.
Free article

Abstract

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) emphasizes the relationship a person has with their thoughts and beliefs as potentially more relevant than belief content in predicting the emotional and behavioral consequences of cognition. In ACT, "defusion" interventions aim to "unhook" thoughts from actions and to create psychological distance between a person and their thoughts, beliefs, memories, and self-stories. A number of similar concepts have been described in the psychology literature (e.g., decentering, metacognition, mentalization, and mindfulness) suggesting converging evidence that how we relate to mental events may be of critical importance. While there are some good measures of these related processes, none of them provides an adequate operationalization of cognitive fusion. Despite the centrality of cognitive fusion in the ACT model, there is as yet no agreed-upon measure of cognitive fusion. This paper presents the construction and development of a brief, self-report measure of cognitive fusion: The Cognitive Fusion Questionnaire (CFQ). The results of a series of studies involving over 1,800 people across diverse samples show good preliminary evidence of the CFQ's factor structure, reliability, temporal stability, validity, discriminant validity, and sensitivity to treatment effects. The potential uses of the CFQ in research and clinical practice are outlined.

Keywords: acceptance and commitment therapy; cognitive fusion; cognitive-behavior therapy; measurement; questionnaires.

PubMed Disclaimer

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources