Assessing adolescent mindfulness: validation of an adapted Mindful Attention Awareness Scale in adolescent normative and psychiatric populations

Interest in mindfulness-based interventions for children and adolescents is burgeoning, bringing with it the need for validated instruments to assess mindfulness in youths. The present studies were designed to validate among adolescents a measure of mindfulness previously validated for adults (e.g., Brown & Ryan, 2003), which we herein call the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale-Adolescent (MAAS-A). In 2 large samples of healthy 14- to 18-year-olds (N = 595), Study 1 supported a single-factor MAAS-A structure, along with acceptably high internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and both concurrent and incremental validity. In Study 2, with a sample of 102 psychiatric outpatient adolescents age 14-18 years, participants randomized to a mindfulness-based stress reduction intervention showed significant increases in MAAS-A scores from baseline to 3-month follow-up, relative to nonsignificant score changes among treatment-as-usual participants. Increases in MAAS-A scores among mindfulness-based stress reduction participants were significantly related to beneficial changes in numerous mental health indicators. The findings support the reliability and validity of the MAAS-A in normative and mixed psychiatric adolescent populations and suggest that the MAAS-A has utility in mindfulness intervention research.     

Selective processing of food,weight, and body-shape words in nonpatient women with bulimia nervosa: Interference on the Stroop task

The study investigated whether the Stroop interference effect could be found in nonpatients with a self-report consistent with a diagnosis of bulimia nervosa. The nonpatient bulimic group showed significantly more interference to disorder-specific words (food, weight, and body shape) than to control words. The two nonpatient comparison groups, a depressed-nonbulimic group and a nonbulimic-nondepressed group, showed no interference. These results indicate that nonpatients with bulimia nervosa can be used to test various models of the cognitive and emotional processes involved in bulimia nervosa with the modified Stroop task. Methodological issues in the use of the computerized Stroop task with clinical populations are also noted.     

Glucocorticoid administration into the dorsal striatum [corrected] facilitates memory consolidation of inhibitory avoidance training but not of the context or footshock components

It is well established that glucocorticoid administration into a variety of brain regions facilitates memory consolidation of fear-conditioning tasks, including inhibitory avoidance. The present findings indicate that the natural glucocorticoid corticosterone administered into the dorsal striatum (i.e., caudate nucleus) of male Wistar rats produced dose- and time-dependent enhancement of inhibitory avoidance memory consolidation. However, as assessed with a modified inhibitory avoidance procedure that took place on two sequential days to separate context training from footshock training, corticosterone administration into the dorsal striatum did not enhance memory of either the contextual or aversively motivational aspects of the task.     

Reading between the minds: the use of stereotypes in empathic accuracy

An ideal empathizer may attend to another person's behavior in order to understand that person, but it is also possible that accurately understanding other people involves top-down strategies. We hypothesized that perceivers draw on stereotypes to infer other people's thoughts and that stereotype use increases perceivers' accuracy. In this study, perceivers (N = 161) inferred the thoughts of multiple targets. Inferences consistent with stereotypes for the targets' group (new mothers) more accurately captured targets' thoughts, particularly when actual thought content was also stereotypic. We also decomposed variance in empathic accuracy into thought, target, and perceiver variance. Although past research has frequently focused on variance between perceivers or targets (which assumes individual differences in the ability to understand other people or be understood, respectively), the current study showed that the most substantial variance was found within targets because of differences among thoughts.     

Ethical issues in exercise psychology

Exercise psychology encompasses the disciplines of psychiatry, clinical and counseling psychology, health promotion, and the movement sciences. This emerging field involves diverse mental health issues, theories, and general information related to physical activity and exercise. Numerous research investigations across the past 20 years have shown both physical and psychological benefits from physical activity and exercise. Exercise psychology offers many opportunities for growth while positively influencing the mental and physical health of individuals, communities, and society. However, the exercise psychology literature has not addressed ethical issues or dilemmas faced by mental health professionals providing exercise psychology services. This initial discussion of ethical issues in exercise psychology is an important step in continuing to move the field forward. Specifically, this article will address the emergence of exercise psychology and current health behaviors and offer an overview of ethics and ethical issues, education/training and professional competency, cultural and ethnic diversity, multiple-role relationships and conflicts of interest, dependency issues, confidentiality and recording keeping, and advertisement and self-promotion.     

Positive behavior support and applied behavior analysis

This article reviews the origins and characteristics of the positive behavior support (PBS) movement and examines those features in the context of the field of applied behavior analysis (ABA). We raise a number of concerns about PBS as an approach to delivery of behavioral services and its impact on how ABA is viewed by those in human services. We also consider the features of PBS that have facilitated its broad dissemination and how ABA might benefit from emulating certain practices of the PBS movement.     

The visual and haptic perception of natural object shape

In this study, we evaluated observers' ability to compare naturally shaped three-dimensional (3-D) objects, using their senses of vision and touch. In one experiment, the observers haptically manipulated 1 object and then indicated which of 12 visible objects possessed the same shape. In the second experiment, pairs of objects were presented, and the observers indicated whether their 3-D shape was the same or different. The 2 objects were presented either unimodally (vision-vision or haptic-haptic) or cross-modally (vision-haptic or haptic-vision). In both experiments, the observers were able to compare 3-D shape across modalities with reasonably high levels of accuracy. In Experiment 1, for example, the observers' matching performance rose to 72% correct (chance performance was 8.3%) after five experimental sessions. In Experiment 2, small (but significant) differences in performance were obtained between the unimodal vision-vision condition and the two cross-modal conditions. Taken together, the results suggest that vision and touch have functionally overlapping, but not necessarily equivalent, representations of 3-D shape.     

Influence of sex differences in leaders' behavior

Sex differences in influence tactics were examined with a sample of 269 followers (67 men, 202 women) at a large midwestern national insurance company who rated the downward influence tactics used by their direct supervisors. Downward influence tactics are behaviors used by leaders to gain compliance from followers. One department within the organization was identified as a source for participants in the study. Participation was voluntary. The age range for the sample was 21 to 65 years, with the largest percentage falling in the 40-49 year range (M = 3.8, SD = .8). Hierarchical linear modeling procedures were utilized to analyze the multiple level data (leader and follower) and to examine variables within the organization at different levels of analysis. Leader participants were asked to solicit their followers to complete an influence tactic measure, which consisted of the most reliable subscales taken from the Influence Behavior Questionnaire, Schriesheim and Hinkin Influence Measure, and the Profiles of Organizational Influence Strategies. The integrated measure resulted in a 45-item scale. It was hypothesized that, overall, followers would report that male leaders would use hard influence tactics more frequently than female leaders. On the other hand, followers would report that female leaders would use soft influence tactics more frequently than male leaders. When differentiating followers by sex, however, we expected that male followers would report more than female followers that their leaders use hard tactics more frequently. Also, we expected that female followers would report (more than male followers) that their leaders use soft tactics more frequently. Overall, followers reported that male leaders used significantly more personal appeal and consultation, so called "soft tactics," with their followers than did female leaders. Female followers reported that their leaders (both male and female) used consultation and inspirational appeal more frequently. In contrast, male followers reported that their leaders used exchange, so called "hard tactics," more frequently.     

Intentional forgetting benefits from thought substitution

This study provides both experimental and correlational evidence that forgetting in the think/no-think paradigm (Anderson & Green, 2001) is sensitive to the substitution of thoughts about new events for thoughts that are to be suppressed. All the participants learned a list of adjective-noun pairs. Then the adjectives were presented as cues for recalling half of the nouns and as cues for suppressing the other half, 0, 2, or 12 times.Aided participants were provided with substitute nouns, to use during suppression. On a final test that requested recall of all initially learned nouns, aided participants showed evidence of below-baseline forgetting of suppressed nouns.Unaided participants produced below-baseline forgetting only if their later self-reports indicated that they had complied relatively well with instructions for suppression. Independently, forgetting in the unaided condition was more successful when the participants reportedly thought about something else during suppression trials. In general, the use of selfinitiated strategiesseems to affect the degree of forgetting in the think/no-think paradigm.