Escaping from worries: Comparing the effectiveness of focusing on one's breath, a neutral and a positive distractor in worry control.

Focused-distraction strategies are commonly used for thought control, but their effectiveness in handling personal worries with different types of distractors has rarely been examined. To examine this issue, 101 undergraduate and graduate students whose depression levels fell below mild depression were recruited (64.4% female, M age = 20.27) and were randomly assigned to one of the three strategy conditions: 34 participants for the focused-breathing strategy (FBS), 34 for the focused-positive-distractor strategy (FPS), and 33 for the focused-neutral-distractor strategy (FNS). After a short introduction and practice, they applied the assigned strategy during a 5-min worry control session to prevent thoughts regarding a recent worrying event. The number of worry intrusions was measured using an online self-caught method. Participants rated their emotional states before and after the worry control session. Their working memory capacities (WMCs) and depressive tendency were comparable across conditions. The results showed the FBS and FPS groups exhibited fewer worry intrusions than did the FNS group. Furthermore, worry intrusions were negatively related to WMC for the FNS group but independent of WMC for the other two. The above findings together indicate that the FBS and FPS are relatively effective and effortless methods for reducing worry intrusions. Negative emotions decreased after the worry control session for all groups. However, decoupling of negative emotions from worry intrusions was only observed for the FBS and FNS groups. Overall, FBS outperforms FPS and FNS in managing worries from the above aspects. Several theoretical and practical implications of the study were discussed.

Who is prone to wander and when? Examining an integrative effect of working memory capacity and mindfulness trait on mind wandering under different task loads.

We proposed an integration hypothesis of mind wandering in which the tendency of mind wandering is only related to working memory capacity (WMC) when a self-regulation process is required (i.e., under a high task load); however, this tendency is related to mindfulness regardless of task load. A within-group experiment with 160 participants was conducted. Task load was manipulated as high or low using modified 0-back and 2-back tasks, during which participants' self-caught mind wanderings and the types of mind wandering (aware vs. unaware; intentional vs. unintentional) were measured. The results supported our hypothesis that WMC was negatively associated with mind wandering only in demanding tasks, and mindfulness scores were negatively associated with mind wandering across tasks. Furthermore, we also determined how WMC and the mindfulness trait were related to different types of mind wandering. Theoretical implications were discussed.

What Confucius practiced is good for your mind: Examining the effect of a contemplative practice in Confucian tradition on executive functions.

The short-term training effects on various executive functions (EFs) by a movement-based contemplative practice (MBCP) are examined. Three aspects of EFs (working memory capacity, inhibition, switching) are assessed before and after a month-long 12-h training period using Body-Mind Axial Awareness (BMAA) principles that Confucius followers have practiced for more than 2000years. A mindfulness-based practice (Chan-meditation) and a waiting-list control group served as contrast groups. Our results showed that the BMAA group performed better on the task that measured working memory capacity than did the Chan-meditation and the waiting-list groups after training. In addition, the Chan-meditation groups outperformed the control group on attentional switching, a novel finding for this kind of practice. Our findings not only show a new effect of short-term MBCPs on EFs, but also indicate movement-based and mindfulness-based contemplative practices might benefit development of various aspects of EFs in different ways.

Better control with less effort: The advantage of using focused-breathing strategy over focused-distraction strategy on thought suppression.

It has been suggested that unwanted thoughts usually intrude during mind wandering due to a shortage of mental resources. However, strategies for suppressing such thoughts have never been examined from a mind wandering perspective. Here, we compare the effectiveness of two types of attention distraction strategies that either redirect users' attention to their own breathing (focused-breathing strategy, FBS) or to a mental image (focused-distraction strategy, FDS) as related to working memory capacities. Eighty-two undergraduates were randomly assigned into a FBS or FDS group. They completed a concentration task and a thought suppression task, in which mind wandering and thought intrusions were each measured. Our results support the hypothesis that mind wandering is positively correlated to thought intrusions and shows that FBS is more effective than FDS in reducing mind wandering and thought intrusions. Moreover, in contrast to FDS, the effect of FBS is independent of users' mental resources.

Propensity or diversity? Investigating how mind wandering influences the incubation effect of creativity.

Mind wandering has been argued to be beneficial for breaking through mental impasses, which leads to better creative performance upon a second attempt (i.e., the incubation effect). However, the evidence is inconsistent. Different from the propensity for mind wandering that has been the focus of past studies, in this study we further examined the role of diversity (i.e., non-repetitiveness of mind wandering respective to its content) and types of mind wandering along the dimensions of intentionality and awareness during incubation when engaging in a 0-back task (a mind wandering-prone condition) and a focused-breathing practice (a mindfulness-induced condition). We proposed that diversity rather than the propensity for mind wandering was crucial for post-incubation divergent creativity and that mindfulness induction would be a more effective way to elicit the incubation effect because it should result in fewer but more diverse mind-wandering incidents than engaging in a mind wandering-prone task. We conducted an experiment with a between-participant variable (incubation tasks: mind wandering-prone, mindfulness-induced, and no incubation). As predicted, the mindfulness-induced group (N = 30) outperformed the control group (N = 31) on flexibility for the unusual uses task measuring divergent thinking after incubation, but the mind wandering-prone group (N = 29) did not outperform the control group. In addition, the diversity of mind wandering and the tendency toward intentional mind wandering predicted the magnitude of incubation effects on flexibility and originality, respectively. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Who is more flexible?-Awareness of changing context but not working memory capacity modulates inhibitory control.

The present study examines how a person's working memory capacity (WMC) and awareness of change in context influences modulating inhibitory control. Context was manipulated by changing the predictive validity of a prime to a following target (i.e., the proportion of prime repetition) across three phases in a single-prime negative priming task. The prime was a distractor for the following target when the proportion was 25% (in the first and third phases) and a useful cue when the proportion rose to 75% (in the second phase). Participants' WMCs were measured and whether they were aware of the change of the prime-repetition proportion was determined in interviews at the end of the experiment. We found that when the stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) was short (Experiment 1), participants aware of the change of prime-repetition proportion showed a null negative priming effect when the contingency increased from 25% to 75%, and then rebooted the effect when it decreased back to 25%, thus indicating an ability to modulate inhibitory control as context varied. In contrast, the unaware participants kept inhibiting primes all the time. When SOA was long (Experiment 2), participants with awareness even showed a positive priming effect when the prime-repetition proportion increased. Surprisingly, participants' WMCs did not matter except for the conscious strategy used in the long-SOA condition. This is the first study simultaneously investigating how WMC and awareness can affect people's ability to modulate inhibitory control and reveals that awareness plays a more direct role in such modulation than does WMC.

The dimensional arrow: agreement in directional mapping of dimensions among Mandarin Chinese- and English-speakers.

We present evidence that English- and Mandarin-speakers agree about how to map dimensions (e.g., size and clarity) to vertical space and that they do so in a directional way. We first developed visual stimuli for four dimensions-size, clarity, complexity, and darkness-and in each case we varied the stimuli to express a range of the dimension (e.g., there were five total items expressing the range covering big, medium, and small). In our study, English- and Mandarin-speakers mapped these stimuli to an unlabelled vertical scale. Most people mapped dimensional endpoints in similar ways; using size as a standard, we found that the majority of participants mapped the clearest, most complex, and darkest items to the same end of the vertical scale as they mapped the biggest items. This indicates that all four dimensions have a weighted or unmarked end (i.e., all are directional or polar). The strong similarities in polarity across language groups contrasted with group differences on a lexical task, for which there was little cross-linguistic agreement about which comparative words to use to describe stimulus pairs (e.g., "bigger" vs. "smaller"). Thus, we found no evidence in this study that the perception of these dimensions is influenced by language.

What is the source of cultural differences? -- Examining the influence of thinking style on the attribution process.

The present research is intended to find out whether individuals with analytic or holistic thought have different attribution processes. Cross-cultural research has suggested that East Asians, who tend to have a holistic thought pattern, differ in cognitive process from Westerners, who tend to engage in analytic thought. However, studies that found cultural difference in attribution process may have non-equivalence problems that make it hard to interpret the causal relationship between thinking style and attribution process. The present research extends this by measuring participants' thinking style within a single culture in order to ensure equivalence on potentially confounding variables such as prior knowledge and cognitive capacity. Two experiments demonstrate that both types of thinkers have identical attribution processes and suggest different thinking styles might relate to different tendencies toward situational information, but not to the attribution process itself.