1,720,976 research outputs found
Acceptance, and not its interaction with attention monitoring, increases psychological well-being: testing the monitor and acceptance theory of mindfulness
No full textObjectives: According to the influential Monitor and Acceptance Theory (MAT), mindfulness includes the two components of attention monitoring and acceptance, which, in conjunction, can explain its benefits on psychological well-being: monitoring alone would increase affective reactivity (MAT tenet 1b), but when combined with acceptance, it would lead to increased psycho-physical well-being (MAT tenet 2b). However, the studies cited in support to MAT are not completely consistent with the theory, Thus, we conducted a cross-sectional study to further test it. Methods: In a pool of 154 participants, we measured the two mindfulness components with the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire, while also assessing ill-being or psychological distress in terms of depression, anxiety, stress, and sleep disturbances, and psychological well-being in terms of life satisfaction and happiness. We then conducted hierarchical regression analysis on these data for assessing the role of monitoring, acceptance, and their interaction on the other psychological variables. Results: Our results show that monitoring alone marginally predicted few ill-being variables, whereas acceptance strongly predicted both reductions in psychological symptoms and increases in well-being. Moreover, no significant interaction between monitoring and acceptance was found for any of the tested variables. Conclusions: The present study provides very little support for the two tested MAT tenets. On the contrary, in line with most of the available literature, our results strongly support the alternative view according to which the beneficial effects of mindfulness on psychological outcomes depend mostly on acceptance
Stress as the missing link between mindfulness, sleep quality, and well-being: a cross-sectional study
No full textObjectives: There is ample evidence that mindfulness contributes to psychological well-being. There is also evidence that mindfulness can improve sleep, and previous research has suggested that the positive effects of mindfulness on well-being may depend on its capacity to decrease sleep disturbances. However, it is possible that a third factor that is affected by mindfulness may in turn affect both sleep quality and well-being. Given the well-known protective effects of mindfulness on stress and the influence of stress on both sleep disturbance and well-being, stress represents a strong candidate for such a mediational role. Methods: We collected cross-sectional data on mindfulness, stress, sleep disturbance, and well-being in a sample of adults taken from the general population, and then we applied structural equation modeling to analyze the relationships between a set of latent variables. Results: Our results confirm that mindfulness is negatively related to stress and this effect fully mediates the positive relationship between mindfulness and both sleep quality and well-being. Furthermore, our results show that if the effect of stress is taken into account, sleep quality does not mediate the influence of mindfulness on well-being and in fact does not relate to well-being at all. Conclusions: Our study points to the central role of stress reduction in explaining the beneficial effects of mindfulness on both behavioral and psychological variables
Accept anxiety to improve sleep: The impact of the covid-19 lockdown on the relationships between mindfulness, distress and sleep quality
Full text linkIt has been recently proposed that mindfulness can improve sleep quality through the mediating role on psychological distress and that acceptance may play a pivotal role in mindfulness beneficial effects. The aim of the present work was to understand the effects of the COVID-19 lockdown on dispositional mindfulness, sleep, and distress, and on their relationships. In particular, we wanted to test the hypothesis that the detrimental effects of lockdown on sleep depended on mindfulness and distress (including anxiety and depression) and that the acceptance facet of mindfulness played the leading role. A longitudinal study based on self-report questionnaires was conducted on 39 Italian adults (M age = 35.03, SD = 14.02; 21 men) assessing mindfulness, distress, and sleep quality before (23 December 2019–8 March 2020) and during (27 April 2020–10 May 2020) the first Italian COVID-19 lockdown. Lockdown decreased mindfulness while increasing distress and sleep problems. Path analysis showed that the effects of lockdown on sleep were fully mediated by mindfulness and distress. Furthermore, a more detailed analysis showed that these effects were mainly dependent on the acceptance component of mindfulness working through anxiety. The present study confirms, in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown, a model according to which mindfulness, and specifically acceptance, influences sleep through the mediating role of distress
How Implicit Attitudes toward Vaccination Affect Vaccine Hesitancy and Behaviour: Developing and Validating the V-IRAP
Full text linkVaccination is one of the most important ways of fighting infectious diseases, such as
COVID-19. However, vaccine hesitancy and refusal can reduce adherence to vaccination campaigns,
and therefore undermine their effectiveness. Although the scientific community has made great efforts
to understand the psychological causes of vaccine hesitancy, studies on vaccine intention have usually
relied on traditional detection techniques, such as questionnaires. Probing these constructs explicitly
could be problematic due to defense mechanisms or social desirability. Thus, a measure capable
of detecting implicit attitudes towards vaccination is needed. To achieve this aim, we designed
and validated a new test called the Vaccine-IRAP, or V-IRAP, which is a modified version of the
original Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure, or IRAP, task. The V-IRAP allows the unspoken
reasons behind vaccine hesitancy to be investigated, and is able to distinguish between positive and
negative beliefs on vaccination. The test was assessed in a sample of 151 participants. The V-IRAP
showed good internal reliability and convergent validity, with meaningful correlational patterns with
explicit measures. Moreover, it revealed incremental validity over such explicit measures. Lastly,
the V-IRAP was able to shed light on the implicit attitudes involved in vaccine refusal, revealing
negative attitudes relative to vaccine-related risks in non-vaccinated participants. Overall, these
results support V-IRAP as a sensitive and reliable tool that could be used in future studies on implicit
attitudes toward vaccination
Global–local processing and dispositional bias interact with emotion processing in the psychological refractory period paradigm
No full textThe reciprocal link between scope of attention and emotional processing is an important aspect of the relationship between emotion and attention. Larger scope of attention or global processing has been linked to positive emotions and narrow scope of attention or local processing has been linked to negative emotions. The nature of this relationship in the context of central capacity limitations and individual differences in attentional processing has not been studied in detail so far. To investigate such a relationship, here we used the psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm, in which we manipulated the stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA: 150 ms, 300 ms, 900 ms) of stimuli corresponding to two tasks in a sequence. The first task was identifying a number at the global or local level; the second task was recognizing the emotional expression (happy or angry). Additionally, predisposition towards local or global perceptual dimension was measured with the global–local task. Results indicated that global precedence modulated PRP effect and that response accuracy was impaired by the combination of local–angry task modalities. Interestingly, interference between simultaneous tasks was modulated by the predisposition to different perceptual levels resulting in different cognitive strategies for performing simultaneous tasks: locally biased subjects tended more towards serial processing, meanwhile globally biased ones were performing tasks in a parallel manner. This result suggest that individual differences may play a role in the choice of dual-task performing strategies
Understanding the Environmental Attitude-Behaviour Gap: The Moderating Role of Dispositional Mindfulness
No full textAbstract
Great scientific effort has been devoted to understanding what drives pro-environmental behaviour, yet the question of the environmental attitude–behaviour gap remains unanswered. Studies have indicated that self-regulation and executive functions may reduce such a gap by increasing individuals’ ability to maintain attention on present actions and to resist goal-conflicting temptations. Given the inherent association of self-regulation and executive functions with dispositional mindfulness, we carried out a cross-sectional study to test the hypothesis of the role of dispositional mindfulness in explaining the phenomenon. Our results showed that higher levels of dispositional mindfulness, measured via the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), are related to a higher tendency to perform pro-environmental behaviour, and that the observing facet of the construct would predict higher pro-environmental behaviour scores. Interestingly, we also found the acting with awareness and nonjudging factors to be moderators of the relationship between pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours, suggesting that enhanced awareness of the present moment may favour higher congruence between attitudes and behaviours, and that higher acceptance may favour more adaptive coping strategies to the climate challenge. Our findings provide a novel contribution to the understanding of the relationship between mindfulness and pro-environmental behaviour and support the perspective that self-regulation skills would contribute to reducing the environmental attitude–behaviour gap
Attentional and cognitive monitoring brain networks in long-term meditators depend on meditation states and expertise
Full text linkMeditation practice is suggested to engage training of cognitive control systems in the brain. To evaluate the functional involvement of attentional and cognitive monitoring processes during meditation, the present study analysed the electroencephalographic synchronization of fronto-parietal (FP) and medial-frontal (MF) brain networks in highly experienced meditators during different meditation states (focused attention, open monitoring and loving kindness meditation). The aim was to assess whether and how the connectivity patterns of FP and MF networks are modulated by meditation style and expertise. Compared to novice meditators, (1) highly experienced meditators exhibited a strong theta synchronization of both FP and MF networks in left parietal regions in all mediation styles, and (2) only the connectivity of lateralized beta MF networks differentiated meditation styles. The connectivity of intra-hemispheric theta FP networks depended non-linearly on meditation expertise, with opposite expertise-dependent patterns found in the left and the right hemisphere. In contrast, inter-hemispheric FP connectivity in faster frequency bands (fast alpha and beta) increased linearly as a function of expertise. The results confirm that executive control systems play a major role in maintaining states of meditation. The distinctive lateralized involvement of FP and MF networks appears to represent a major functional mechanism that supports both generic and style-specific meditation states. The observed expertise-dependent effects suggest that functional plasticity within executive control networks may underpin the emergence of unique meditation states in expert meditators
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
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