On paying attention and feeling good: Links between present-moment awareness and emotional well-being in adolescents

Joseph Ciarrochi, University of WollongongTodd B. Kashdan, George Mason University

Peter Leeson, Carlie Jordon, and Patrick Heaven, University of Wollongong

“Are we there yet?” “We are here”

The rise and rise of mindfulness research

• There has been a rise of mindfulness based therapies, such as Mindfullness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, and Dielectic Behavior Therapy (Hayes, Strosahl, & Wilson, 1999b; Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Linehan, 1993; Segal, Williams, & Teasdale, 2002)

• There has also been a rapid increase in studies that look at individual differences in mindfulness using self-report measures (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006; Baer, Smith, & Allen, 2004; Brown & Ryan, 2003; Cardaciotto, Herbert, Forman, Moitra, & Farrow, 2008; Kohls, Sauer, & Walach, 2009).

• In general, the evidence from intervention and correlational research suggests that mindfulness has beneficial effects on mental health, physical health, and social relationships (Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007)

The lack of mindfulness research in adolescence

• Little intervention research, and even less research on measurement in adolescence (but see Greco, Dew, and Baer, 2005)

• We examine the extent that the present-moment awareness component of mindfulness is– distinctive from well-established measures of

personality– related in expected ways to established measure of

emotion identification skills and avoidance tendencies– able to predict changes in emotional well-being over a

one-year interval.

What is mindfulness

• Mindfulness can be defined as focusing one’s attention on present moment experience with an attitude of openness and curiosity (Bishop et al., 2004; Kashdan, 2009)

What is mindfulness• Research by Baer and her colleagues has identified several

dimensions of mindfulness, including – Observing (e.g., “I pay attention to whether my muscles are tense or

relaxed”)

– Describing (e.g., “I’m good at finding the words to describe my feelings”)

– Acting with awareness (“ I tend to do several things at once rather than focusing on one thing at a time.”)

– Accepting without judgment ( “I tell myself that I shouldn’t be feeling the way I’m feeling”).

– The Child Acceptance and Mindfulness Measure is the focal point of the present research program (Greco et al., 2005).

Why is mindfulness good for you?

• More mindful people are more successful in their self-control and self-regulation efforts (Brown et al., 2007; Masicampo &

Baumeister, 2007). Mindfulness allows the regulation of action that is informed by needs, feelings, values, and their fit with the current situation (Brown et al., 2007).

• Mindfulness may undermine the dominance of unhelpful verbal networks (Fletcher & Hayes, 2005; Hayes & Plumb, 2007)

• Mindfulness may help people respond flexibly to changing environmental opportunities and demands.(Brown et al., 2007; Miller, Wyman, Huppert, Glassman, & Rathus, 2000).

Evidence for benefits of mindfulness in young people

• Semple, Reid, & Miller (2005) conducted a six-week mindfulness trial with children (aged 7 to 8) and found trends suggesting the intervention reduced teacher-rated problems in 75% of the sample

• Lee and colleagues (2008) examined the impact of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy on children (aged 8 to 12). These researchers found that those who completed the study (17 of 25) showed fewer externalizing symptoms by parent report

Evidence for benefits of mindfulness in young people

• Linden (1973) provided children (aged 7 to 9) with meditation practice and found that relative to a control group, the intervention group showed less test anxiety and demonstrated greater ability to self-regulate attention (Linden, 1973).

Evidence for benefits of mindfulness in adolescence

• Singh and colleagues (2007) conducted a small pilot study with three adolescents (aged 13-14) with conduct disorder. All three adolescents showed a decline in antisocial behaviour (e.g., aggression, bullying).

• Miller and colleagues (2000) found Dielectic Behavior Therapy reduced symptoms such as confusion about the self and interpersonal problems amongst adolescence (aged 14-19). Of the nineteen skills taught, three of the four most highly rated skills involved mindfulness (“do what works”, “observe”, and “stay focused”).

Evidence for benefits of mindfulness in adolescence

• Preliminary evidence suggests that the Child and Acceptance Mindfulness Measure (CAMM) is linked to higher quality of life, and lower somatic complaints, externalizing and internalizing behaviour, avoidance and suppression (Greco et al., 2005).

•

The study

Participants

• Students were surveyed in the middle of Grade 10 and 11

• 776 students (male=388, female, 386; mean age= 2 unreported) completed the first wave of data , 572 (male=269; female = 301, 2 missing)

• Attrition was due to conflicting school activities (e.g., photos), school absences, changing schools and leaving the school for the workforce.

• Missing value analysis revealed that mean levels were similar among completers and non-completers across most variables

Key measures

• Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure focus on 20 items measuring observe and acting with awareness.

• We excluded the 5-items that focused on accepting without judgment, because our questionnaire already contained a validated adolescent measure of psychological acceptance ( AAQ-17)

• We refer to this variation of the CAMM as the CAMM-20

Key measures

• Greco et al. developed a ten item version of the measure, but we learned of this only after we started . The ten item version includes Acting with awareness and accepting without judgment.

Exploratory Factor analysis

• Principal axis factoring followed by an obliminin rotation

• Factor analysis was conducted seperately for boys and girls, which allowed us to examine the extent the observed factor structure was replicated in two samples.

Item Observe ACT without Aware

M F M F

8. I notice my thoughts as they come and go .76 .75 .04 .1113. I pay close attention to whatever is happening right now

.67 .60 -.16 .02

5. I pay close attention to my thoughts .61 .65 -.04 .0512. I notice when my feelings begin to change .60 .69 .14 .237. When I take a shower or bath, I notice how the water feels on my body

.59 .62 .09 .22

9. When I’m eating, I notice the way it feels to chew my food

.56 .56 .08 .19

2. I pay attention to my muscles and notice when they feel tight or relaxed

.52 .62 .12 .14

14. I notice how things around me smell .53 .59 .02 .161. I notice small changes in my body, like when my breathing slows down or speeds up

.49 .62 .10 .12

Item Observe ACT without Aware

M F M F

20. I find myself doing things without paying attention -.02 .05 .72 .8215. When I do things, my mind wanders off and I’m easily distracted

-.05 .03 .69 .66

4. I do things without thinking about what I’m doing -.07 -.06 .65 .643. At school, I walk from class to class without noticing what I’m doing

-.03 .00 .59 .64

18. I rush through activities without being really attentive to them

-.03 .06 .55 .58

10. It’s hard for me to pay attention to only one thing at a time

.08 .14 .55 .55

19. I do jobs or tasks automatically, without being aware of what I’m doing

.16 .18 .54 .58

11. I think about things that have happened in the past instead of thinking about things that are happening right now

.12 .24 .52 .56

Cross-sectional analysis: Exploring the relationship with other major personality

constructs

• We expected observing to be associated with openness to experience, whereas AWA should be associated with lower neuroticism and higher emotional well-being

• With theory and research indicating that mindfulness promotes self-control (Masicampo & Baumeister, 2007), we expected higher AWA to be positively associated with constructs reflecting conscientiousness (Costa, McCrae, & Dye, 1991) and negatively associated with constructs reflecting impulsivity (Corulla, 1990; Zuckerman, 1993, 2007).

Cross-sectional analysis: Exploring the nomological network

• We expected mindfulness, and especially AWA, to be positively linked to two theoretically-relevant adolescent measures, namely emotion identification skill, and psychological flexibility.

Observing Acting with awareness

Mindfulness

1. Observing .85

2. Act with Awareness -.20** .83

Big five personality

3. Neuroticism .15** -.47**

4. Extraversion -.03 .08

5. Openness .35** .04

6. Agreeableness .22** .01

7.Consciensiousness .24** .39**

8. Psychoticism (unsocialized, impulsive) -.05 -.24**

9. Emotion identification skill -.19** .51**

10. Psych inflexibility .31** -.49**

Utility of the AWA scale of the CAMM-20

• To assess the utility of the CAMM-20, we examined the extent that it predicted changes in emotional well-being over the course of one-year. On average, people high in AWA were expected to show improvements in well-being compared with those high in AWA.

Regression analysis summary for Grade 10 variables predicting Grade 11 positive affect (pos), sadness, hostility, and fear.

Grade 11

Pos. affect Sadness Hostility Fear

β R2 β R2 β R2 β R2

Grade 10 .44 .46 .37 .36

Baseline affect .63** 60** .51** .53**

Act with awareness .13** -.16**

-.20** -.15**

Discriminant validity

• AWA predicted changes in future sadness and hostility even after controlling for psychological flexibility, emotion identification skill, and all six major personality factors.

Conclusions: AWA is promising

• AWA correlated in expected ways with personality and related constructs, yet was shown to be distinct from those constructs.

• Consistent with our hypotheses, AWA proceeded decreases in sadness, fear, and hostility, and increases in positive affect.

• AWA is not merely a correlate (epiphenomenon) or consequence of well-being.

• This finding suggests that AWA has a causal role in well-being. However, as with any longitudinal study, there is always the possibility that unmeasured variables explain the longitudinal link between AWA and well-being

Conclusions: Increasing AWA may decrease antisocial behavior

• AWA was associated with two prosocial traits, conscientiousness and low psychoticism. This suggests that adolescents who engage in antisocial behaviours may do so in part because they are not aware of their own be

• Consistent with this view, Heppner and colleagues (2008) found that adult dispositional mindfulness was correlated with lower self-reported aggressiveness and hostile attribution style.

• In a second study, they found that experimentally manipulating mindfulness resulted in less-aggressive behaviour following a salient social rejection.

Conclusions: There are positive and negative sides to untrained observing

• We found the observing scale to correlate with both positive aspects of personality (e.g., openness) and negative aspects (high neuroticism, psychological inflexibility, fear, sadness.)

• Similarly, Baer found the adult observe scale correlated with high openness and high psychological symptoms (Baer et al., 2006).

• Baer suggests training may help people to observe without judgment. Thus, one may find a negative relationship between observe and well-being pre-training, and a positive relationship post training.