We evaluated the efficacy of a mindful parenting program for changing parents’ mindfulness, child management practices, and relationships with their early adolescent youth and tested whether changes in parents’ mindfulness mediated changes in other domains. We conducted a pilot randomized trial with 65 families and tested an adapted version of the Strengthening Families Program: For Parent and Youth 10–14 that infused mindfulness principles and practices against the original program and a delayed intervention control group. Results of pre-post analyses of mother and youth-report data showed that the mindful parenting program generally demonstrated comparable effects to the original program on measures of child management practices and stronger effects on measures of mindful parenting and parent–youth relationship qualities. Moreover, mediation analyses indicated that the mindful parenting program operated indirectly on the quality of parent–youth relationships through changes in mindful parenting. Overall, the findings suggest that infusing mindful parenting activities into existing empirically validated parenting programs can enhance their effects on family risk and protection during the transition to adolescence.
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Over his long career as witness to an extreme twentieth century, National Book Award-winning psychiatrist, historian, and public intellectual Robert Jay Lifton has grappled with the profound effects of nuclear war, terrorism, and genocide. Now he shifts to climate change, which, Lifton writes, “presents us with what may be the most demanding and unique psychological task ever required of humankind,” what he describes as the task of mobilizing our imaginative resources toward climate sanity.Thanks to the power of corporate-funded climate denialists and the fact that “with its slower, incremental sequence, [climate change] lends itself less to the apocalyptic drama,” a large swathe of humanity has numbed themselves to the reality of climate change. Yet Lifton draws a message of hope from the Paris climate meeting of 2015 where representatives of virtually all nations joined in the recognition that we are a single species in deep trouble.
Here, Lifton suggests in this lucid and moving book that recalls Rachel Carson and Jonathan Schell, was evidence of how we might call upon the human mind—“our greatest evolutionary asset”—to translate a growing species awareness—or “climate swerve”—into action to sustain our habitat and civilization.
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Self-compassion, mindfulness, and psychological inflexibility, constructs associated with mindfulness-based interventions, have demonstrated associations with multiple aspects of psychological health. However, a very limited body of research has analyzed the relative predictive strength among mindfulness-related constructs. Regression analyses were performed to determine the common and unique variance in psychological health predicted by these constructs and to compare their relative predictive strength in a nonclinical sample of 147 undergraduate students at a Mid-Atlantic university. Consistent with previous research, self-compassion demonstrated a stronger ability than single-factor mindfulness to predict variance in psychological health. However, results were mixed when a multifaceted measure of mindfulness was considered. Self-compassion predicted greater variance than multifaceted mindfulness when prediction was based on one total score, but not when individual subscales were analyzed. Psychological inflexibility predicted greater variance than did self-compassion for negative indicators of psychological health. Results suggest that self-compassion and psychological inflexibility may demonstrate greater associations with psychological health than single scores of mindfulness and that important predictive power is lost, particularly from the nonreactivity facet, when multifaceted mindfulness is consolidated into a single score.
The authors compared 12 pairs of cerebral [18F]-fluoro-deoxyglucose (FDG) 2D/3D image sets from a GE/Advance PET scanner, incorporating the actual corrections used on human subjects. Differences in resolution consistent with other published values were found. There is a significant difference in axial resolution between 2D and 3D, and the authors focused on this as it is a scanner feature that cannot be readily changed. Previously published values for spatial axial resolution in 2D and 3D modes were used to model the differential axial smoothing at each image voxel. This model was applied to the 2D FDG images, and the resulting smoothed data indicate the published differences in axial resolution between 2D and 3D modes can account for 30-40% of the differences between these image sets. The authors then investigated the effect this difference might have on analysis typically performed on human FDG data. A phantom containing spherical hot- and cool-spots in a warm background to mimic a typical human cerebral FDG PET scan was scanned for a variety of time durations (30, 15, 5, 1 min). Only for the 1-minute frame (total counts 2D:6M, 3D:30M) is there an advantage to using 3D mode; for the longer frames which are more typical of a human FDG protocol, the reliability for extracting regions-of-interest is the same for either mode while 2D mode shows better quantitative accuracy
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Undergraduate and graduate students show elevated levels of stress and could thus benefit from mindfulness interventions, but the best way to teach mindfulness has not been established. The present study compared a stress management program that used formal meditations and informal practice (Mindful Stress Management; MSM) to one that used brief mindfulness exercises and informal practice (Mindful Stress Management-Informal; MSM-I), and a wait-list control. MSM participants exhibited significant within-group changes on all measures, and when compared to the wait-list control, greater levels of mindfulness, decentering, and self-compassion, as well as lower stress. Students in MSM-I had significant within-group changes on a subset of measures, and greater mindfulness and self-compassion compared to the wait-list. MSM participants showed more improvement in self-compassion, psychological inflexibility, and stress than did those in MSM-I. Mediational analyses found increases in one facet of mindfulness and self-compassion, and decreases in worry mediated reductions in stress for MSM participants, while no mediator reached significance for MSM-I. Finally, no significant relation between amount of formal meditation and informal practice and reductions in psychological distress or increases in mindfulness was found. Results suggest that a program with formal meditations and informal practice may be a more promising intervention for university student stress than one with brief mindfulness exercises and informal practice.
In answering these questions, conservation cannot promise a return to pristine, prehuman landscapes. Humankind has already profoundly transformed the planet and will continue to do so.6 What conservation could promise instead is a new vision of a planet in which nature -- forests, wetlands, diverse species, and other ancient ecosystems -- exists amid a wide variety of modern, human landscapes. For this to happen, conservationists will have to jettison their idealized notions of nature, parks, and wilderness -- ideas that have never been supported by good conservation science -- and forge a more optimistic, human-friendly vision.
Mount Kawa Karpo of the Menri ('Medicine Mountains' in Tibetan), in the eastern Himalayas, is one of the most sacred mountains to Tibetan Buddhists. Numerous sacred sites are found between 1900 and 4000 m, and at higher elevations the area as a whole is considered a sacred landscape. Religious beliefs may affect the ecology of these sacred areas, resulting in unique ecological characteristics of importance to conservation; recent studies have demonstrated that sacred areas can often play a major role in conservation. The goal of this study is to preliminarily analyze the vegetation of sacred areas in the Menri region using existing vegetation maps and a Geographical Information System (GIS) for remote assessment. Sacred sites are compared to random points in the landscape, in terms of: elevation, vegetation, and nearness to villages; species composition, diversity, and richness; and frequency of useful and endemic plant species. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) ordination reveals that sacred sites differ significantly in both useful species composition (p=0.034) and endemic species composition (p=0.045). Sacred sites are located at lower elevations, and closer to villages, than randomly selected, non-sacred sites (p< 0.0001), and have higher overall species richness (p=0.033) and diversity (p=0.042). In addition, the high-elevation (> 4000 m) areas of the mountain - a sacred landscape - are found to have significantly more endemics than low-elevation areas (p<0.0001). These findings represent an initial analysis of sacred sites and suggest that sacred sites in the Menri region may be ecologically and ethnobotanically unique.
Mount <i>Kawa Karpo</i> of the <i>Menri</i> ('Medicine Mountains' in Tibetan), in the eastern Himalayas, is one of the most sacred mountains to Tibetan Buddhists. Numerous sacred sites are found between 1900 and 4000 m, and at higher elevations the area as a whole is considered a sacred landscape. Religious beliefs may affect the ecology of these sacred areas, resulting in unique ecological characteristics of importance to conservation; recent studies have demonstrated that sacred areas can often play a major role in conservation. The goal of this study is to preliminarily analyze the vegetation of sacred areas in the <i>Menri</i> region using existing vegetation maps and a Geographical Information System (GIS) for remote assessment. Sacred sites are compared to random points in the landscape, in terms of: elevation, vegetation, and nearness to villages; species composition, diversity, and richness; and frequency of useful and endemic plant species. Detrended correspondence analysis (DCA) ordination reveals that sacred sites differ significantly in both useful species composition (<i>p</i>=0.034) and endemic species composition (<i>p</i>=0.045). Sacred sites are located at lower elevations, and closer to villages, than randomly selected, non-sacred sites (<i>p</i>< 0.0001), and have higher overall species richness (<i>p</i>=0.033) and diversity (<i>p</i>=0.042). In addition, the high-elevation (> 4000 m) areas of the mountain - a sacred landscape - are found to have significantly more endemics than low-elevation areas (<i>p</i><0.0001). These findings represent an initial analysis of sacred sites and suggest that sacred sites in the <i>Menri</i> region may be ecologically and ethnobotanically unique.
This handbook addresses the educational uses of mindfulness in schools. It summarizes the state of the science and describes current and emerging applications and challenges throughout the field. It explores mindfulness concepts in scientific, theoretical, and practical terms and examines training opportunities both as an aspect of teachers’ professional development and a means to enhance students’ social-emotional and academic skills. Chapters discuss mindfulness and contemplative pedagogy programs that have produced positive student outcomes, including stress relief, self-care, and improved classroom and institutional engagement. Featured topics include: A comprehensive view of mindfulness in the modern era.Contemplative education and the roots of resilience. Mindfulness practice and its effect on students’ social-emotional learning.A cognitive neuroscience perspective on mindfulness in education that addresses students’ academic and social skills development. Mindfulness training for teachers and administrators.Two universal mindfulness education programs for elementary and middle school students.The Handbook of Mindfulness in Education is a must-have resource for researchers, graduate students, clinicians, and practitioners in psychology, psychiatry, education, and medicine, as well as counseling, social work, and rehabilitation therapy.
<p>This article draws on research in neuroscience, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and education, as well as scholarship from contemplative traditions concerning the cultivation of positive development, to highlight a set of mental skills and socioemotional dispositions that are central to the aims of education in the 21st century. These include self-regulatory skills associated with emotion and attention, self-representations, and prosocial dispositions such as empathy and compassion. It should be possible to strengthen these positive qualities and dispositions through systematic contemplative practices, which induce plastic changes in brain function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success in young people. These putative beneficial consequences call for focused programmatic research to better characterize which forms and frequencies of practice are most effective for which types of children and adolescents. Results from such research may help refine training programs to maximize their effectiveness at different ages and to document the changes in neural function and structure that might be induced.</p>
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This article draws on research in neuroscience, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and education, as well as scholarship from contemplative traditions concerning the cultivation of positive development, to highlight a set of mental skills and socioemotional dispositions that are central to the aims of education in the 21st century. These include self-regulatory skills associated with emotion and attention, self-representations, and prosocial dispositions such as empathy and compassion. It should be possible to strengthen these positive qualities and dispositions through systematic contemplative practices, which induce plastic changes in brain function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success in young people. These putative beneficial consequences call for focused programmatic research to better characterize which forms and frequencies of practice are most effective for which types of children and adolescents. Results from such research may help refine training programs to maximize their effectiveness at different ages and to document the changes in neural function and structure that might be induced.
This article draws on research in neuroscience, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and education, as well as scholarship from contemplative traditions concerning the cultivation of positive development, to highlight a set of mental skills and socioemotional dispositions that are central to the aims of education in the 21st century. These include self-regulatory skills associated with emotion and attention, self-representations, and prosocial dispositions such as empathy and compassion. It should be possible to strengthen these positive qualities and dispositions through systematic contemplative practices, which induce plastic changes in brain function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success in young people. These putative beneficial consequences call for focused programmatic research to better characterize which forms and frequencies of practice are most effective for which types of children and adolescents. Results from such research may help refine training programs to maximize their effectiveness at different ages and to document the changes in neural function and structure that might be induced.
This article draws on research in neuroscience, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and education, as well as scholarship from contemplative traditions concerning the cultivation of positive development, to highlight a set of mental skills and socioemotional dispositions that are central to the aims of education in the 21st century. These include self-regulatory skills associated with emotion and attention, self-representations, and prosocial dispositions such as empathy and compassion. It should be possible to strengthen these positive qualities and dispositions through systematic contemplative practices, which induce plastic changes in brain function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success in young people. These putative beneficial consequences call for focused programmatic research to better characterize which forms and frequencies of practice are most effective for which types of children and adolescents. Results from such research may help refine training programs to maximize their effectiveness at different ages and to document the changes in neural function and structure that might be induced.
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This article draws on research in neuroscience, cognitive science, developmental psychology, and education, as well as scholarship from contemplative traditions concerning the cultivation of positive development, to highlight a set of mental skills and socioemotional dispositions that are central to the aims of education in the 21st century. These include self-regulatory skills associated with emotion and attention, self-representations, and prosocial dispositions such as empathy and compassion. It should be possible to strengthen these positive qualities and dispositions through systematic contemplative practices, which induce plastic changes in brain function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success in young people. These putative beneficial consequences call for focused programmatic research to better characterize which forms and frequencies of practice are most effective for which types of children and adolescents. Results from such research may help refine training programs to maximize their effectiveness at different ages and to document the changes in neural function and structure that might be induced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]; Copyright of Child Development Perspectives is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
What is wholeness? To answer this question, it is helpful to present a specific setting. Imagine someone not yet recognizing it asking, “what is roundness?” We might try to answer him by giving a number of instances, such as “the moon is round,” “the plate is round,” “the coin is round,” and so on. Of course “round” is none of these things, but by adducing a number of such instances we may hope to provoke in him the recognition of roundness. This happens when his perception of the specific instances is reorganised, so that they now become like mirrors in which roundness is seen reflected. In spite of what many people might think, this process does not involve empirical generalization — i. e., abstracting what is common from a number of cases. The belief that concepts are derived directly from sensory experiences is like believing that conjurors really do produce rabbits out of hats. Just as the conjuror puts the rabbit into the hat beforehand, so the attempt to deduce the concept by abstraction in the empiricist manner presupposes the very concept it pretends to produce.
The human brain and skull are three dimensional (3D) anatomical structures with complex surfaces. However, medical images are often two dimensional (2D) and provide incomplete visualization of structural morphology. To overcome this loss in dimension, we developed and validated a freely available, semi-automated pathway to build 3D virtual reality (VR) and hand-held, stereolithograph models. To evaluate whether surface visualization in 3D was more informative than in 2D, undergraduate students (n = 50) used the Gillespie scale to rate 3D VR and physical models of both a living patient-volunteer's brain and the skull of Phineas Gage, a historically famous railroad worker whose misfortune with a projectile tamping iron provided the first evidence of a structure-function relationship in brain. Using our processing pathway, we successfully fabricated human brain and skull replicas and validated that the stereolithograph model preserved the scale of the VR model. Based on the Gillespie ratings, students indicated that the biological utility and quality of visual information at the surface of VR and stereolithograph models were greater than the 2D images from which they were derived. The method we developed is useful to create VR and stereolithograph 3D models from medical images and can be used to model hard or soft tissue in living or preserved specimens. Compared to 2D images, VR and stereolithograph models provide an extra dimension that enhances both the quality of visual information and utility of surface visualization in neuroscience and medicine.
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We examined the effect of an image of a pair of eyes on contributions to an honesty box used to collect money for drinks in a university coffee room. People paid nearly three times as much for their drinks when eyes were displayed rather than a control image. This finding provides the first evidence from a naturalistic setting of the importance of cues of being watched, and hence reputational concerns, on human cooperative behaviour.
The effects of randomization to a workplace mindfulness training (WMT) or a waitlist control condition on teachers’ well-being (moods and satisfaction at work and home), quantity of sleep, quality of sleep, and sleepiness during the day were examined in 2 randomized, waitlist controlled trials (RCTs). The combined sample of the 2 RCTs, conducted in Canada and the United States, included 113 elementary and secondary school teachers (89% female). Measures were collected at baseline, postprogram, and 3-month follow-up; teachers were randomly assigned to condition after baseline assessment. Results showed that teachers randomized to WMT reported less frequent bad moods at work and home, greater satisfaction at work and home, more sleep on weekday nights, better quality sleep, and decreased insomnia symptoms and daytime sleepiness. Training-related group differences in mindfulness and rumination on work at home at postprogram partially mediated the reductions in negative moods at home and increases in sleep quality at follow-up.
Usage of the term 'theory of mind' (ToM) has exploded across fields ranging from developmental psychology to social neuroscience and psychiatry research. However, its meaning is often vague and inconsistent, its biological bases are a subject of debate, and the methods used to study it are highly heterogeneous. Most crucially, its original definition does not permit easy downward translation to more basic processes such as those studied by behavioral neuroscience, leaving the interpretation of neuroimaging results opaque. We argue for a reformulation of ToM through a systematic two-stage approach, beginning with a deconstruction of the construct into a comprehensive set of basic component processes, followed by a complementary reconstruction from which a scientifically tractable concept of ToM can be recovered.
We hypothesized that partisans who represent power and the status quo would judge their opponents less accurately than would partisans seeking change, who would be stereotyped as extremists. We surveyed the attitudes and book preferences of traditionalist and revisionist English professors, who differed in their inclinations to preserve or change the literary status quo. Both groups overestimated the differences in their attitudes and book preferences, the extremity of their opponent's conviction, and the numerical balances of the two sides. Consistent with the status quo hypotheses, traditionalists were more prone to polarize the two sides' attitudes and underestimate the book preferences they shared with their opponents, and both sides attributed more extreme convictions to revisionists. Discussion focused on mechanisms related to power-related biases.
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