cross-training

1. training employees in a variety of tasks or jobs that are outside their specialty areas so that they can substitute for one another when unforeseen absences occur. Cross-training is used to develop employee skills and to increase the flexibility with which a group or organization can deal with work demands.

2. improvement in skill performance of one part of the body (e.g., the left hand) as a result of practice with another part of the body (e.g., the right hand). Also called cross-education.

3. in sport, combining different sport or fitness activities to improve such areas as performance, endurance, flexibility, or weight loss. Combinations such as running (track), swimming, and weightlifting are typical. —cross-train vb.

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Psychology term of the day

March 17th 2025

enactment

1. the acting out of an important life event rather than expressing it in words. See psychodrama.

2. in some forms of psychoanalytic psychotherapy, the patient’s reliving of past relationships in the transference relationship with the therapist and, conversely, the therapist’s move away from active neutrality to unwittingly intertwine personal issues into symbolic interactions with the patient (a countertransference phenomenon). Attunement to the relational patterns that emerge in this therapeutic relationship offers the therapist an opportunity to help the patient acknowledge and work through similar patterns in the patient’s relationships with others. See also relational psychoanalysis; self psychology.

3. in some forms of couples therapy, a technique in which the therapist recreates areas of conflict between partners in order to facilitate bonding moments.

4. see structural family therapy.