Infant Responding to Joint Attention, Executive Processes, and Self-Regulation in Preschool Children

Infant joint attention is related to behavioral and social outcomes, as well as language in childhood. Recent research and theory suggests that the relations between joint attention and social–behavioral outcomes may reflect the role of executive self-regulatory processes in the development of joint attention. To test this hypothesis two studies were conducted. The first, cross-sectional study examined the development of responding to joint attention (RJA) skill in terms of increasing executive efficiency of responding between 9 and 18 months of age. The results indicated that development of RJA was characterized by a decreased latency to shift attention in following another person\u27s gaze and head turn, as well as an increase in the proportion of correct RJA responses exhibited by older infants. The second study examined the longitudinal relations between 12-month measures of responding to joint attention and 36-month attention regulation in a delay of gratification task. The results indicated that responding to joint attention at 12-months was significantly related to children\u27s use of three types of self-regulation behaviors while waiting for a snack reward at 36 months of age. These observations are discussed in light of a developmental theory of attention regulation and joint attention in infancy

Mindfulness Training for Improving Attention Regulation in University Students: Is It Effective? and Do Yoga and Homework Matter?

The present study examined the effects of mindfulness training on attention regulation in university students and whether the potential benefits of implementation are influenced by the yoga component of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) and/or by MBI homework practice. In a non-randomized trial with pre- and post-assessments, n = 180 university students were allocated to either mindfulness training (experimental groups), awareness activities (active control group), or no training (passive control group). Mindfulness was taught through two MBIs, one including yoga and the other excluding yoga. Attention regulation was operationalized via behavioral indicators, namely sustained attention, cognitive flexibility, cognitive inhibition, and data-driven information processing. With the exception of speed in a cognitive flexibility task, the results indicated no systematic or differential advantage arising from mindfulness training, with or without yoga, regarding the aspects of attention regulation. There was no consistent influence of homework quantity or quality. The implications for mindfulness training in academic contexts are discussed

Investigating Daily Writing Emotions, Attention Regulation, and Productivity: An Intensive Longitudinal Study

Emotions pervade academic situations and influence the ways that learners think, behave, and achieve (Pekrun, 2006; Schutz & Lanehart, 2002). Writing may be a particularly emotion-laden activity, and especially so for students concentrating in fields that value writing production. However, very few studies have quantitatively investigated writers’ emotional experiences. The goal of the current study was to examine the writing-related emotions of graduate students enrolled in writing-intensive disciplines as well as how these emotions related to writers’ daily productivity and attention-regulation behaviors. To do so, the study employed a daily diary design (Gunthert & Wenze, 2012) in which participants completed brief daily surveys over 28 days. Data from a final sample of 183 participants were analyzed in several frameworks, including descriptive statistics, reliable change indices, and longitudinal modeling via generalized estimating equations. Results from these analyses indicate that writers tend to experience positive valence emotions (e.g. enjoyment, pride) more strongly than negative valence emotions (e.g. anxiety, shame) and that, for most of the emotions studied, writers’ emotional states tended to vary considerably from day to day. Furthermore, results indicate that writers’ emotional states are differentially related to daily writing outcomes such as attention regulation, time spent writing, and number of words written, and that state emotions are more predictive of these outcomes than are trait emotions. Theoretical implications and suggestions for future research are also presented

Mindful, neurotic, or both: efficacy of online single-session mindfulness

With the popularity of online websites and apps that use mindfulness audio recording to teach mindfulness practice, it piqued our interest to examine how online mindfulness resources like Headspace can be helpful to the non-clinical population. The current study aimed to investigate the efficacy of brief (15 min) single-session mindfulness on attention regulation (as measured by word-colour Stroop task). In response to the limitations outlined in previous studies, we also examine the moderation effect of two individual differences (i.e., neuroticism and dispositional mindfulness). This experimental design randomly assigned the participants into either the experimental (Headspace) or control group (audiobook recording). Their level of neuroticism and dispositional mindfulness were measured by using the IPIPNEO-120 and MAAS scale respectively. Results indicate that, in the experiment group, participants’ attention regulation on different levels of neuroticism varied across different level of dispositional mindfulness. However, the patterns of the results were not as expected. This study has shown that in general a single-session mindfulness might not be efficacious in enhancing attention regulation. However, there were specific groups of personality traits that benefitted from it

SELF-REGULATION IN OLDER ADULTS: THE PRIORITIZATION OF EMOTION REGULATION

Despite having fewer cognitive resources, older adults regulate their emotions as well as, if not better than, younger adults. This study aimed to (1) test the limits of older adults’ emotion regulation capacity and (2) gain a better understanding of how older adults use their more limited resources to regulate their emotions. Participants included 48 healthy older adults aged 65-85 from the community and 50 healthy younger adults aged 18-25 from the student population. They were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups involving an initial activity that was high or low in self-regulatory demand followed by a test task of emotion regulation or attention regulation. As expected, older adults performed equally as well as younger adults on the emotion regulation test task, though worse on the attention regulation test task. Using resting heart rate variability (HRV) as a physiological measure of self-regulatory capacity, older adults appeared to allocate more resources toward the emotion regulation task compared to the attention regulation task, and relative to younger adults. The results suggest that older adults maintain their emotion regulation capacity in part by allocating more resources toward emotion regulation goals

The improvement of emotion and attention regulation after a 6-week training of focused meditation :

Self-regulatory trainings can be an effective complementary treatment for mental health disorders. We investigated the effects of a six-week-focused meditation training on emotion and attention regulation in undergraduates randomly allocated to a meditation, a relaxation, or a wait-list control group. Assessment comprised a discrimination task that investigates the relationship between attentional load and emotional processing and self-report measures. For emotion regulation, results showed greater reduction in emotional interference in the low attentional load condition in meditators, particularly compared to relaxation. Only meditators presented a significant association between amount of weekly practice and the reduction in emotion interference in the task and significantly reduced image ratings of negative valence and arousal, perceived anxiety and difficulty during the task, and state and trait-anxiety. For attention regulation, response bias during the task was analyzed through signal detection theory. After training, meditation and relaxation significantly reduced bias in the high attentional load condition. Importantly, there was a doseresponse effect on general bias: the lowest in meditation, increasing linearly across relaxation and wait-list. Only meditators reduced omissions in a concentrated attention test. Focused meditation seems to be an effective training for emotion and attention regulation and an alternative for treatments in the mental health context

Neural signatures of task-related fluctuations in auditory attention change with age

Listening in everyday life requires attention to be deployed dynamically – when listening is expected to be difficult and when relevant information is expected to occur – to conserve mental resources. Conserving mental resources may be particularly important for older adults who often experience difficulties understanding speech. We use electro- and magnetoencephalography to investigate the neural and behavioral mechanics of dynamic attention regulation during listening and the effects that aging may have on these. We show that neural alpha oscillatory activity indicates when in time attention is deployed (Experiment 1) and that deployment depends on listening difficulty (Experiment 2). Older adults also show successful attention regulation, although younger adults appear to utilize timing information a bit differently compared to older adults. We further show that the recruited brain regions differ between age groups. Superior parietal cortex is involved in attention regulation in younger adults, whereas posterior temporal cortex is more involved in older adults (Experiment 3). This difference in the sources of alpha activity across age groups was only observed when a task was performed, and not for alpha activity during resting-state recordings (Experiment S1). In sum, our study suggests that older adults employ different neural control strategies compared to younger adults to regulate attention in time under listening challenges

Mediators of the Relationship Between Mindfulness and Alcohol Use

Mindfulness is the act of paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally (Kabat-Zinn, 1994, p.4). Mindfulness training has been shown to produce beneficial effects for a wide range of physical and psychological symptoms, including substance abuse (Baer, 2003). The current study attempted to test a working model of how mindfulness can enhance psychological well-being developed by Hölzel et al. (2011) within the specific context of alcohol use. It was hypothesized that higher levels of mindfulness would be associated with less alcohol use and less alcohol-related problems experienced. In addition, this study investigated whether this predicted inverse relationship between mindfulness and alcohol use is mediated by attention regulation, emotion regulation, body awareness, and change in perspective on the self. One hundred fifty-seven Eastern Illinois University students participated in the study through an online survey. The results of the study demonstrated that mindfulness was, indeed, negatively correlated with alcohol use and alcohol-related problems. In addition, mindfulness was positively correlated with attention regulation, emotion regulation, body awareness, and change in perspective on the self. Subsequent analyses demonstrated that emotion regulation fully mediated the relationship between mindfulness and alcohol use, while attention regulation, body awareness, and change in perspective on the self did not act as mediators. Clinical implications of this research, limitations, and suggestions for future studies were discussed

Digital distraction, attention regulation, and inequality

In the popular and academic literature on the problems of the so-called attention economy, the cost of attention grabbing, sustaining, and immersing digital medias has been addressed as if it touched all people equally. In this paper I ask whether everyone has the same resources to respond to the recent changes in their stimulus environments caused by the attention economy. I argue that there are not only differences but disparities between people in their responses to the recent, significant increase in the degree and persuasiveness of digital distraction. I point toward individual variance in an agent’s top-down and bottom-up attention regulation, and to further inequality-exacerbating variance in active participation on the internet and in regulating reward-seeking behaviors on the internet. Individual differences in these areas amount to disparities because they have been found to be connected to socioeconomic background factors. I argue that disparities in responding to digital distraction threaten fair equality of opportunity when it comes to digital distraction in the classroom and that they may lead to an unequal contribution of achievements that require complex cognition by people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds

Examining the Use of Mindfulness Meditation to Enhance Attention Regulation Efficiency in Nursing Students

The development of mindfully-attentive nursing graduates is a heightened charge for pre-licensure nurse educators given an increasingly complex healthcare workplace in which nurse\u27s must detect patient risk among multiple stimuli, distractions, and interruption (Beyea, 2007; Cornell et al., 2010; Ebright, et al., 2006). Novice nurses frequently report symptoms of cognitive overload associated with error and other negative patient outcomes (Ebright, Urden, Patterson, & Chalko, 2004; McGillis Hall et al., 2010; Unver, Tastan, & Akbayrak, 2012) yet standard pre-licensure nursing curricula does not specifically prepare students for the needed attention regulation skills of safe nursing practice. Recent and accumulating neuroscientific research suggests a strong correlation between regular practice of mindfulness meditation (MM) (Eberth & Sedlmeier, 2012) and enhanced attentional capacity. This randomized controlled trial therefore investigated the effect of MM as compared to standard nursing education on the efficiency of attentional processes (alerting, orienting, and executive function) in pre-licensure registered nursing students (N=52) as well as on accuracy in performance of a nursing skill. It was framed by Posner and Gilbert\u27s (2002) neuropsychological Model of Attention. Main outcome data were collected using the Attention Network Test (ANT) (Fan, McCandliss, Sommer, Raz & Posner, 2002), and an investigator-developed Medication Administration Task (MAT). Examination of possible confounding influences of perceived stress using the Perceived Stress Scale - 10 (PSS-10) (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983) and mindfulness using the Five -Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) (Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006) were also included. Nursing students who participated in online training and four weeks of daily MM practice demonstrated improvement to executive attention efficiency as compared to a non-meditating control group F (1, 49) =4.26, p = .044, although interpretation was restricted by accompanied low power .53. MAT results on nursing skill accuracy were non-significant, but group differences on posttests of PSS-10 and FFMQ were significant F (2, 47) = 7.16, p = .002, power .92. After four weeks of meditation, participants in the MM group scored higher in mindfulness characteristics and lower in perceived stress than control group participants who did not meditate