A randomised controlled trial of a brief online mindfulness-based intervention

ObjectivesThere is growing evidence that mindfulness has positive consequences for both psychological and physical health in both clinical and non-clinical populations. The potential benefits of mindfulness underpin a range of therapeutic intervention approaches designed to increase mindfulness in both clinical and community contexts. Self-guided mindfulness-based interventions may be a way to increase access to the benefits of mindfulness. This study explored whether a brief, online, mindfulness-based intervention can increase mindfulness and reduce perceived stress and anxiety/depression symptoms within a student population.MethodOne hundred and four students were randomly allocated to either immediately start a two-week, self-guided, online, mindfulness-based intervention or a wait-list control. Measures of mindfulness, perceived stress and anxiety/depression were administered before and after the intervention period.ResultsIntention to treat analysis identified significant group by time interactions for mindfulness skills, perceived stress and anxiety/depression symptoms. Participation in the intervention was associated with significant improvements in all measured domains, where no significant changes on these measures were found for the control group.ConclusionsThis provides evidence in support of the feasibility and effectiveness of shorter self-guided mindfulness-based interventions. The limitations and implications of this study for clinical practice are discussed.     

Test anxiety and comprehension efficiency: The role of prior knowledge and working memory deficits

The hypotheses that test anxiety is associated with a deficit in prior knowledge and/or working memory capacity, that anxiety impairs comprehension efficiency, and that deficits in knowledge and capacity underlie the efficiency impairment, were tested. In Study 1, high-anxiety students were characterized by lower scores in several vocabulary measures, compared with low-anxiety students. In Study 2, high-anxiety individuals showed inferior working memory capacity to low-anxiety individuals under evaluative stress conditions, but not under non-stress conditions. In Study 3 high-anxiety subjects exhibited lower efficiency scores than low-anxiety subjects in expository texts without a summary: The former employed a greater amount of reading time than the latter to acquire an equivalent amount of information. In addition, the disadvantage in efficiency associated with anxiety was removed when differences in vocabulary knowledge were partialled out statistically. Instead, that disadvantage was only reduced, but not eliminated, when differences in transitory working memory capacity were partialled out. Therefore, the prior knowledge deficit hypothesis accounts for the impairment in reading efficiency associated with high anxiety better than the transitory working memory reduction hypothesis.     

In search of a surrogate for touch: The effect of haptic imagery on perceived ownership

Previous research has shown that individuals value objects more highly if they own them, a finding commonly known as the endowment effect. In fact, simply touching an object can create a perception of ownership that produces the endowment effect. In this paper, we extend this line of research in several ways. First, we show that haptic imagery, or imagining touching an object, can have the same effect on perceived ownership as physical touch. We then demonstrate that haptic imagery can lead to perceptions of physical control, which in turn increase feelings of ownership. Moreover, the more vivid the haptic imagery, the greater the perception of control and the feeling of ownership. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

Book Review

Repetition priming is one of the most robust phenomena in cognitive psychology, but participants vary substantially on the amount of priming that they produce. The current experiments assessed the reliability of repetition priming within individuals. The results suggest that observed differences in the size of the repetition priming effect across participants are largely reliable and result primarily from systematic processes. We conclude that the unreliability of semantic priming observed by Stolz, Besner, and Carr (2005) is specific to uncoordinated processes in semantic memory, and that this unreliability does not generalize to other processes in visual word recognition. We consider the implications of these results for theories of automatic and controlled processes that contribute to priming. Finally, we emphasize the importance of reliability for researchers who use similar paradigms to study individual and group differences in cognition.     

The influence of visual short-term memory on size perception

We show that perceived size of visual stimuli can be altered by matches between the contents of visual short-term memory and stimuli in the scene. Observers were presented with a colour cue (to hold in working memory or to merely identify) and subsequently had to indicate which of the two different-coloured objects presented simultaneously on the screen appeared bigger (or smaller). One of the two objects for size judgements had the same colour as the cue (matching stimulus) and the other did not (mismatching stimulus). Perceived object size was decreased by the reappearance of the recently seen cue, as there were more size judgement errors on trials where the matching stimulus was physically bigger (relative to the mismatching stimulus) than on trials where the matching stimulus was physically smaller. The effect occurred regardless of whether the visual cue was actively maintained in working memory or was merely identified. The effect was unlikely generated by the allocation of attention, because shifting attention to a visual stimulus actually increased its perceived size. The findings suggest that visual short-term memory, whether explicit or implicit, can decrease the perceived size of subsequent visual stimuli.     

Perceived job autonomy and turnover intention: The moderating role of perceived supervisor support

Perceived job autonomy has been recognized as a central tenet of work design, leading to a range of positive outcomes. Still, scholars have rightfully questioned its predictive role for several outcomes, including turnover intention as the two have been found to be virtually unrelated. In line with calls for more complex research on the predictive role of perceived job autonomy on employee outcomes, the purpose of this study was to investigate whether the relationship between perceived job autonomy and turnover intention may be prone to contextual influences. Two cross-sectional surveys among 680 Norwegian employees from different public service organizations showed that the relationship between perceived job autonomy and turnover intention was moderated by perceived supervisor support. In support of our hypothesis, the form of the moderations revealed that perceived job autonomy was negatively related to turnover intention only for employees reporting high levels of perceived supervisor support. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.     

Building commitment to change: The role of perceived supervisor support and competence

Commitment to change is considered the glue that binds people and change goals. Still, few studies have explored how employees develop their commitment to organizational change. The present study examined the relationship between supervisor competence and support, and employee's commitment to change. Participants were 210 full-time employees from two public organizations that had recently faced major change interventions resulting from governmental directives. As predicted, perceived supervisor support fully mediated the positive relationship between competence and affective and normative commitment to change. On the other hand, supervisor competence was negatively related to continuance commitment to change. These findings illustrate how supervisors can shape employees' reactions to change.     

Positivity bias in employees' self-ratings of performance relative to supervisor ratings: The roles of performance type,performance-approach goal orientation,and perceived influence

As hypothesized, data from two field studies among employees and their supervisors showed that employees are more likely to positively bias their self-ratings relative to supervisor ratings when creative performance rather than inrole performance is being evaluated. In addition, employees' performance-approach goal orientation and perceived influence were found to enhance positivity bias in self-ratings of creative performance. Moreover, performance-approach goal orientation and perceived influence appeared to combine and interact in their effects, such that the impact of perceived influence on positivity bias in self-ratings was larger when performance-approach goal orientation was weaker rather than stronger.     

An experience-sampling measure of job satisfaction and its relationships with affectivity,mood at work,job beliefs,and general job satisfaction

In this article, we proposed an experience-sampling method of measuring job satisfaction, assessed the contributions of average levels of mood at work and job beliefs to the prediction of job satisfaction, and examined the role of mood in mediating the relationship between affectivity and job satisfaction. The study involved a three-phase multisource longitudinal design that included experience-sampling surveys in the second phase of the study. Results suggested that average levels of experience-sampled job satisfaction indicate the general attitudinal construct of job satisfaction. As expected, pleasant mood at work and beliefs about the job made independent contributions to the prediction of job satisfaction (as measured with an overall evaluation and with an experience-sampling measure). In support of our mediation hypotheses, pleasant mood mediated the affectivity?–?job satisfaction relationship and the mediating effect was much stronger when job satisfaction was assessed with the experience-sampling method.     

Adolescents as “producers of their own development”: Correlates and consequences of the importance and attainment of developmental tasks

In a four-wave longitudinal study, 228 adolescents from seven age cohorts were investigated annually regarding the importance and subjective attainment of age-specific developmental tasks. Distal outcomes (educational trajectory and residential independence) were examined when the adolescents were 21 years old. The results of latent growth models (LGM) showed that there was no mean level change in the importance of developmental tasks, whereas perceived attainment of developmental tasks increased over time. In general, whereas the importance of developmental tasks was more impacted by family factors, the attainment of tasks was more influenced by individual factors. Adolescents with more parental support for autonomy had higher developmental aspirations. Adolescents with unemployed fathers showed greater increases in the importance of developmental tasks, which subsequently predicted a higher educational trajectory. Only a small proportion of adolescents perceived a high initial level of attainment of diverse tasks; for 85% of the sample, the typical growth pattern with respect to overall attainment of developmental tasks was a moderate initial level, which increased over time. Girls, early maturers, and first-born adolescents reported higher perceived attainment of developmental tasks.