Iftah Yovel's Clinical Research Laboratory (PCP Lab)

Our research in the PCP lab focuses primarily on basic components of cognitive behavioral treatments (e.g., ‎acceptance and commitment therapy). The broad objective of these studies is to closely examine, ‎in well controlled experimental settings, the mechanisms that underlie changes in CBT. Because ‎we test adaptations of actual treatment elements (e.g., cognitive defusion, cognitive ‎restructuring, values work, exposure), the relevance of the methods we use to the clinical ‎contexts to which the research is meant to generalize is of particular importance.

 

Additional lines ‎of research in the PCP lab focus on psychometrics and assessment (e.g., of obsessive compulsive ‎disorder) and on individual differences in cognitive functioning. A fundamental assumption of ‎cognitive approaches to clinical psychology is that individuals respond differently to objectively ‎similar situations because they differ in how they perceive these situations. Such differences can ‎exist at various stages of cognitive processing, ranging from lower-level processes such as the ‎initial detection of threat, to higher level mental representations such as broad schemata of the ‎self and of the world. Earlier research of Dr. Iftah Yovel examined primarily affective and non-affective ‎attentional biases related to personality and to psychopathology. Currently studies in the PCP lab ‎focus more on the assessment and examination of higher-level processes and mechanisms (e.g., ‎mindfulness, emotion regulation techniques).

 

Dr. Iftah Yovel is also interested in the implicit assessment of ‎personality. Implicit assessment methods are less susceptible to self-presentation strategies ‎compared to self-report scales, and they provide information to which the person may not be ‎aware. The PCP lab has developed the questionnaire-based Implicit Association Test (qIAT), which is ‎based on the methodology of the IAT but closely resembles the procedures of standard self-‎report instruments. The qIAT allows the assessment of ordinary questionnaire items, and it ‎therefore provides the means for the indirect assessment of numerous constructs tapped by ‎existing self-report scales.