Examining the roles of experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion on the effects from mindfulness to athlete burnout: A longitudinal study

ObjectivesAthlete burnout is a maladaptive outcome that is potentially detrimental for performance and wellbeing. Cross-sectional evidence suggests that mindfulness might be associated with athlete burnout via experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion. In the current study, we extend knowledge of these hypothesized mediational pathways using a longitudinal design.MethodsData was collected at three occasions with a three-month interval. A final sample of 280 elite Chinese athletes aged 15–32 years (M_age = 19.13; SD = 2.92; Female = 130) reported their mindfulness at Time 1, experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion at Time 2, and athlete burnout at Time 3. Structural equation modelling was adopted to examine the mediating roles of experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion on the effects from mindfulness to athlete burnout.ResultsWe found statistically meaningful directs effects from mindfulness (Time 1) to experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion (Time 2), which in turn influenced athlete burnout (Time 3). However, the direct effect from mindfulness at Time 1 to athlete burnout at Time 3 was non-significant. The indirect effects of experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion on the effects from mindfulness to athlete burnout were significant, providing longitudinal evidence that these two variables contribute meaningfully to the mindfulness-burnout pathway.ConclusionWith initial evidence for the mediating effects of experiential avoidance and cognitive fusion, future studies could consider using experimental designs to examine the potential changing mechanisms of mindfulness on reducing athlete burnout.     

An integrated mindfulness and acceptance-based program for young elite female basketball players: Exploratory study of how it works and for whom it works best

In order to better understand how an integrated mindfulness and acceptance-based intervention works and for whom it works best, study objectives were to examine (i) the trajectories of mindfulness skills and performance-related outcomes during the intervention, and athletes’ perceptions of the impact of the intervention; and (ii) the potential moderating effects of personality characteristics on changes in targeted variables associated with the intervention. The sample consisted of 40 young elite female basketball players (M = 16.33, SD = 0.75 years) from three incoming groups at the French Federal Basketball Center over a 3-year period. All players participated in a 15-week Mindfulness BasketBall Integrated program. They completed online questionnaires measuring personality traits 10 months before the intervention, as well as pre-, mid- and post-intervention measurements of mindfulness skills, intensity and directional interpretation of stress, and performance satisfaction. They also participated in semi-structured social validation interviews conducted one month after the intervention. The results of the multilevel growth curve (MGCA) and thematic analyses revealed how the mindfulness skills and performance-related outcomes evolved over the course of the intervention and how these changes were perceived by the athletes. Specifically, the MGCA showed significant linear increases in acceptance, positive stress direction, and performance satisfaction. The complementary social validation data indicated perceived improvements in mindfulness skills and performance. The MGCA also showed that baseline personality traits moderated the effects of the program on acceptance and experience of stress. These findings may be used to inform the design of more effective integrated mindfulness and acceptance-based interventions.     

Integrated mindfulness-based intervention: Effects on mindfulness skills,cognitive interference and performance satisfaction of young elite badminton players

ObjectivesMindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions (MABI) in sport settings need further development and validation to fulfil the desired outcomes related to sport performance. The current study aimed to design and implement a MABI integrated into the badminton training of young elite players (MBI programme), and to investigate its impact on sport performance-related outcomes.DesignTwo stages: (a) design and implementation of the MBI programme, and (b) evaluation using a mixed methods approach.MethodParticipants were young elite badminton players, assigned either to the 8-week MBI programme (n = 18; M_age = 16.22), or the 8-week placebo programme (n = 11; M_age = 16.64). Participants completed pre- and post-intervention measures of mindfulness skills, cognitive interference, and performance satisfaction. Social validation interviews were conducted with MBI participants to collect their overall perceptions of the programme.ResultsMANCOVA indicated a large intervention effect on the main outcome variables (partial η² = 0.58). The results of univariate ANCOVAs showed that post-intervention awareness, performance worries and task-irrelevant thoughts differed significantly across the groups. In addition, follow-up t-tests provided additional information regarding changes from pre- to post-intervention among the MBI and control groups separately. Social validation data gave further insights into what athletes had retained and applied from the MBI programme.ConclusionsContrasting results highlighted the need to better explore mindfulness mechanisms in MABI and the way they are inter-related, in order to strengthen changes in sport performance-related outcomes.     

You’ll see what you mean: Students encode equations based on their knowledge of arithmetic

This study investigated the roles of problem structure and strategy use in problem encoding. Fourth-grade students solved and explained a set of typical addition problems (e.g., ) and mathematical equivalence problems (e.g., or ). Next, they completed an encoding task in which they reconstructed addition and equivalence problems after viewing each for 5 s. Equivalence problems of the form overlap with a perceptual pattern found in traditional arithmetic problems (i.e., answer blank in final position), and students’ encoding was poorest on problems of this type. Individual differences in encoding the equivalence problems were related to variations in strategy use. Some students solved blank-final equivalence problems using the standard arithmetic strategy of performing all given operations on all given numbers. These students made more errors in encoding problem structure, but fewer errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who solved the problems using correct or other incorrect strategies. Moreover, students who expressed many strategies for solving the blank-final equivalence problems made fewer errors in encoding problem structure, but more errors in encoding the numbers, than did students who expressed only a single strategy. Results highlight that encoding is intended to guide action and that prior experience can simultaneously facilitate and interfere with accurate encoding.     

“We want the world and we want it now”: Materialism,time perspectives and problem spending tendency of Chinese

Chinese consumers' spending has been expanding rapidly in the past decade, and along with it household and credit card debt. The present research collected evidence to triangulate the contention that materialism is positively related with Chinese's problem spending tendency (PST), and that present‐time‐perspective (PTP) and future‐time perspectives (FTP) interact systematically with materialism to affect PST. A survey of the general population in Macao, China (Study 1; N = 239) confirmed that materialism was positively correlated with PST. An interaction between materialism and PTP intensified the relationship, whereas an interaction with FTP weakened the relationship. Another survey with a sample of university students (Study 2; N = 223) again found positive relationships among PST, materialism, and PTP, as measured by temporal discount rate. But further exploration showed that PST was only related with temporal discounting among high materialists, but not among low materialists. Study 3 experimentally examined the causal effects of materialism and FTP on PST. When being primed of an orientation towards materialism (n = 33), the participants' planned consumption doubled that of the control group (n = 31). A FTP prime interacted with materialism prime and put a “damper” on participants' planned spending (n = 29), compared to their counterparts who were not primed of such a time perspective.     

Effects of text messaged self-monitoring on class attendance and punctuality of at-risk college student athletes

This study examined the effects of text messaging class arrival to an academic counselor on the attendance and punctuality of 4 college student athletes. Each participant had a history of class tardiness and was considered to be at risk for academic failure. Class attendance and punctuality improved for all participants.     

Perfectionism: The good,the bad,and the creative

The influence of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism on creativity was examined. Initially, six measures of creativity were administered, including creative self-perceptions, behavior, and performance measures. Adaptive perfectionism was weakly positively related to creativity, whereas maladaptive perfectionism was unrelated to creativity across five of the six measures. A follow-up study assessed whether initial findings could be generalized to an everyday problem-solving task. Results indicated that adaptive perfectionism was related to higher quality but not originality of solutions. Further, a curvilinear relationship in the shape of an inverted “U” occurred between adaptive perfectionism and four of eight creativity measures. Overall, adaptive perfectionism was consistently, albeit weakly, related to creativity across various types of measures, whereas maladaptive perfectionism was not related to creativity.     

Athlete identity and athlete satisfaction: The nonconformity of exclusivity

The goal of this study was to determine if there was a relationship between athletic identity, a relatively stable individual difference, and athlete satisfaction. A second goal was to evaluate the structure of athletic identity to examine potential differences between facets. Analyzing data from 175 NCAA student athletes, results indicated that use of overall athletic identity hid meaningful relationships between this self-identity concept and level of athlete satisfaction. When examined at the facet level, results indicated that athletic social identity and negative affectivity were positively related to athlete satisfaction while the exclusivity facet of athletic identity was negatively related to athlete satisfaction.     

Dissociable stages of problem solving (II): first evidence for process-contingent temporal order of activation in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

In a companion study, eye-movement analyses in the Tower of London task (TOL) revealed independent indicators of functionally separable cognitive processes during problem solving, with processes of building up an internal representation of the problem preceding actual planning processes. These results imply that processes of internalization and planning should also be distinguishable in time and space with respect to concomitant brain activation patterns. To investigate this possibility, here we conducted analyses of fMRI data for left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) during problem solving in the TOL task by accounting for the trial-by-trial variability of onsets and durations of the different cognitive processing stages. Comparisons between stimulus-locked and response-locked modeling approaches affirmed that activation in left dlPFC was elicited particularly during early processes of internalization, comprising the extraction of goal information and the generation of an internal problem representation, whereas activation in right dlPFC was predominantly attributable to later processes of mental transformations on this representation, that is planning proper. Thus, present data corroborate the proposal that often observed bilateral dlPFC activation patterns during complex cognitive tasks such as problem solving may reflect functionally and, to some extent, even temporally separable processes with opposing lateralizations.     

Dissociable stages of problem solving (I): temporal characteristics revealed by eye-movement analyses

Understanding the functional neuroanatomy of planning and problem solving may substantially benefit from better insight into the chronology of the cognitive processes involved. Based on the assumption that regularities in cognitive processing are reflected in overtly observable eye-movement patterns, here we recorded eye movements while participants worked on Tower of London (TOL) problems that comprised an experimental manipulation of different task demands. Single-trial saccade-locked analyses revealed that higher demands on forming an internal problem representation were associated with an increased number of gaze alternations between start state and goal state, but did not show any effect on the durations of these inspections of the states. In contrast, higher demands on actual planning in terms of mental manipulations of working memory contents coincided with a prolonged duration of the very last inspection of the start state (i.e., immediately preceding movement execution) but did not show any effect on the number of gaze alterations. Differential task demands on internalization and planning processes during problem solving hence selectively affect different eye-movement parameters. Moreover, these findings complement previous neuroimaging data on dissociable contributions of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in problem solving with novel evidence for a corresponding dissociation in the eye-movement patterns reflecting the associated cognitive processes.