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.     

The impact of politeness and relationship on perceived quality of advice about a problem

Advice is a common but potentially problematic way to respond to someone who is distressed. Politeness theory (Brown & Levinson, 1987) suggests advice threatens a hearer's face and predicts that the speaker‐hearer relationship and the use of politeness strategies can mitigate face threat and enhance the effectiveness of advice messages. Students (N=384) read 1 of 16 hypothetical situations that varied in speaker power and closeness of the speaker‐hearer relationship. Students then read 1 of 48 advice messages representing different politeness strategies and rated the message for regard shown for face and for effectiveness. However, neither speaker‐hearer relationship nor politeness strategies was consistently associated with perceived threat to face or perceived advice effectiveness. We suggest revisions to politeness theory and additional factors that may affect judgments of face sensitivity and advice effectiveness.     

The influence of negative advertising frames on political cynicism and politician accountability

This research examined the influence of negative political advertising frames on the thoughts and feelings people generate in response to campaign advertising. Preparing and conducting this investigation involved the use of a multiple‐method strategy. Content analysis identified two advertising frames (i.e., candidate theme and ad hoc issue advertisements) and two experiments separately induced political cynicism and politician accountability. Three hundred and sixty people participated in the experimental studies, in which they read and responded, using a thought‐listing technique, to candidate theme or ad hoc issue negative advertisements. Results demonstrated that participants were more likely to generate cynical comments and hold politicians accountable for the country's ills when reading candidate theme advertisements than ad hoc issue advertisements. The results indicate that this contributes to a political climate of cynicism and may function to erode the electorate's overall trust in government.     

Effects of level of retrieval success on recall-related frontal and medial temporal lobe activations

Brain dedicated single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) was used to compare the neuroactivation produced by the cued recall of response words in a set of studied word pairs with that produced by the cued retrieval of words semantically related to unstudied stimulus words. Six of the 12 subjects scanned were extensively trained so as to have good memory of the studied pairs and the remaining six were minimally trained so as to have poor memory. When comparing episodic with semantic retrieval, the well-trained subjects showed significant left medial temporal lobe activation, which was also significantly greater than that shown by the poorly trained subjects, who failed to show significant medial temporal lobe activation. In contrast, the poorly trained subjects showed significant bilateral frontal lobe activation, which was significantly greater than that shown by the well-trained subjects who failed to show significant frontal lobe activation. The frontal activations occurred mainly in the dorsolateral region, but extended into the ventrolateral and, to a lesser extent, the frontal polar regions. It is argued that whereas the medial temporal lobe activation increased as the proportion of response words successfully recalled increased, the bilateral frontal lobe activation increased in proportion to retrieval effort, which was greater when learning had been less good.