Poster Presentation 6th World Congress on Positive Psychology 2019

The Effect of Brief Mindfulness Training on Attetnion Bias to Threat: Difference According to Stimuli-Presentation Time (#834)

SEOK-IN YOON 1 , HUI-YEONG PARK 1 , WAN-SUK GIM 2
  1. IT Psychology, Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea
  2. Health Psychology, Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of brief mindfulness training on time-course of attention to threat seen by anxious people. To do this, participants randomly assigned to one of two training groups (mindfulness, control), and performed dot-probe task after completing a brief training session. Considering the time-course of attention, the stimulus-presentation time of dot-probe task was adjusted to 450ms and 1250ms. The performance of the top 50 percent participants with high level of trait anxiety was used for the analysis of results. As a result of study, control group showed a attentional bias toward the threat when the stimulus was presented shortly (450 ms), but no bias when the stimulus was long (1250 ms). These results suggested that vigilance-avoidnace hypothesis was verified in high-anxious people. On the other hand, mindfulness group showed no bias of attention regardless of the stimulus-presentation time. These results suggested that brief mindfulness training reduced initial hypervigilance toward threat in high-anxious people and helped them to regulate unpleasure mood. Finally, limitations of this study and implications for future research were discussed.