covert negative reinforcement

in behavior therapy, a technique in which the client first imagines an aversive event and then switches to imagining engaging in a behavior that reverses the adversiveness of the event. For example, a client might imagine that he or she is alone at a restaurant, feeling insecure and unhappy, and then switches the imaginary scene to one in which he or she is asking another person for a date and that person says yes. Compare covert positive reinforcement.

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Psychology term of the day

May 10th 2024

psychometric research

studies in the field of psychological measurement. Such research includes the development of new measures and appropriate methods for their scoring, the establishment of reliability and validity evidence for measures, the examination of item and scale properties and their dimensions, and the evaluation of differential item functioning across subgroups. For example, psychometric research could be used to determine whether a new scale is appropriately administered and scored in a specific subpopulation of respondents.