A pilot study on the relationships between language, personality and attachment styles: A linguistic analysis of descriptive speech.

The present exploratory study investigated possible relationships between language and personality, attachment styles, and mindfulness disposition. Sixty-three participants were assessed through the Big-Five inventory questionnaire, the Attachment Style Questionnaire, and the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, and then they were asked to look at a picture story and describe it. Narrations were analyzed through a multilevel approach: the number of verbal units and information units reported were counted; the Type/Token Ratio, disfluencies and errors of cohesion were also calculated. Results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that mindfulness and Extraversion were positively related to the number of information units reported about the story. Two dimensions of anxious attachment style presented opposite patterns of association with language expression: individuals high in Need for Approval tended to be more descriptive, while participants high in Preoccupation with Relationships reported less information. Results suggest that individuals' personality, relational histories, and self-awareness may significantly influence their verbal production.

Spontaneous eye movements during focused-attention mindfulness meditation.

Oculometric measures have been proven to be useful markers of mind-wandering during visual tasks such as reading. However, little is known about ocular activity during mindfulness meditation, a mental practice naturally involving mind-wandering episodes. In order to explore this issue, we extracted closed-eyes ocular movement measurements via a covert technique (EEG recordings) from expert meditators during two repetitions of a 7-minute mindfulness meditation session, focusing on the breath, and two repetitions of a 7-minute instructed mind-wandering task. Power spectral density was estimated on both the vertical and horizontal components of eye movements. The results show a significantly smaller average amplitude of eye movements in the delta band (1-4 Hz) during mindfulness meditation than instructed mind-wandering. Moreover, participants' meditation expertise correlated significantly with this average amplitude during both tasks, with more experienced meditators generally moving their eyes less than less experienced meditators. These findings suggest the potential use of this measure to detect mind-wandering episodes during mindfulness meditation and to assess meditation performance.