Mindfulness as a Moderator in the Relation Between Income and Psychological Well-Being.

The relation between income and life satisfaction has been found to be weak, albeit positive (r = 0.10-0.20). This study introduced psychological well-being (PWB) as a dependent variable predicted by income in addition to life satisfaction. Furthermore, individual differences might determine the strength of this relation, that is, act as moderators. Thus, this study introduced mindfulness as one such possible moderator. Participants (N = 800, 50% women, aged 20-59 years) completed an Internet questionnaire. Of them, 734 reported income and were included in the analyses. Income had weak, yet positive, zero-order correlations with life satisfaction and PWB (r = 0.13 and 0.11). Hierarchical regression controlling for demographics indicated that the relation between income and PWB was moderated by mindfulness facets. Specifically, among those low in not judging or describing of experiences, PWB was positively related to income. On the other hand, those high in these mindfulness dimensions indicated higher PWB irrespective of income.

The Looming Maladaptive Style Questionnaire: Measurement invariance and relations to anxiety and depression across 10 countries.

The Looming Maladaptive Style Questionnaire (LMSQ) is a self-report measure designed to assess the looming cognitive style, a tendency to interpret threats as rapidly approaching and increasing in magnitude. To date, no systematic evaluation on the psychometric properties of the LMSQ across diverse cultural contexts has been done. In the present research, the measurement invariance of the LMSQ test scores was examined in 10 countries (N=4000). Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that a two-factor model (i.e., physical looming and social looming) fitted the data well across countries. Partial measurement invariance was established for the LMSQ scores across the countries whereas full measurement invariance was achieved across gender. Meta-analytic structural equation modeling was applied to examine the unique contributions of the two looming factors to anxiety and depression symptoms. Results indicated that the test scores underlying two looming factors were crucial and valid predictors of symptoms. The LMSQ shows promise as a measure with cross-cultural generalizability and opens new avenues for its use in diverse cultural settings.

Detailed course of depressive symptoms and risk for developing depression in late adolescents with subthreshold depression: a cohort study.

PURPOSE: Despite its clinical importance, adolescent subthreshold depression remains a largely neglected topic. The aims of this study were to accurately identify the natural course of depressive symptoms and the risk for developing major depressive episode (MDE) in late adolescents with subthreshold depression over 1 year. PATIENTS AND METHODS: One hundred and seventy-two participants <20 years of age (mean age: 18.32 years, standard deviation: 0.50), who did not meet the full criteria for an MDE, were selected from 2,494 screened freshmen based on the Beck Depression Inventory, 2nd edition (BDI-II). We conducted a cohort study of three groups (low-, middle-, and high-symptom groups) divided based on BDI-II scores, over a 1 year period with the use of bimonthly assessments. Temporal changes of depressive symptoms were analyzed using linear mixed modeling and growth mixture modeling. RESULTS: First, we found that late adolescents with subthreshold depression (high depressive symptoms) were split between the increasing and decreasing depressive symptoms groups, whereas the majority of the less-symptoms group remained stable during 1 year. Second, in comparison with late adolescents with less depressive symptoms, those with subthreshold depression had an elevated risk of later depression. CONCLUSION: Some late adolescents with subthreshold depression had increased depressive symptoms and developed an MDE during 1 year. Therefore, it is necessary for us to rigorously assess the changes in subthreshold depressive symptoms over time in late adolescents.

Attention Moderates the Relationship Between Primary Psychopathy and Affective Empathy in Undergraduate Students.

Psychopathy is personality traits, which is consisted of primary psychopathy characterized by affective and interpersonal problems and secondary psychopathy characterized by behavioral problems. Prior researchers have suggested that people with psychopathy have peculiar attention, which prevents them from detecting information peripheral to their concern, and we hypothesized that this explains their low empathy. Based on these reasoning, the present study assessed whether attention moderates the relationship between psychopathy and affective empathy. Eighty-five undergraduates (40 men and 45 women; mean age = 19.8 years; SD = 1.6) completed the Levenson Self-Report Psychopathy Scale, the Interpersonal Reactivity Index, and a perceptual load task. Hierarchical regression showed that a significant moderation effect was found: primary psychopathy was negatively associated with affective empathy, among those with reduced interference from task-irrelevant stimuli under a medium level of perceptual load. Future study should need to replicate this finding with clinical population.

Relationships Between Refraining From Catastrophic Thinking, Repetitive Negative Thinking, and Psychological Distress.

Skills to refrain from catastrophic thinking were negatively related to worry and a wide range of psychological distress. Repetitive negative thinking (including worry) is proposed as a common etiological factor for a wide range of psychological distress. Therefore, reduced repetitive negative thinking would mediate the negative relation between refraining from catastrophic thinking and psychological distress (depression, social anxiety, phobia, generalized anxiety, and obsessions and compulsions). As an overlap between five indices of psychological distress was expected, we first computed latent factors underlying them, which were then predicted by refraining from catastrophic thinking and repetitive negative thinking. Cross-sectional questionnaire data from 125 nonclinical voluntarily participating students (M age = 19.0 years, SD = 3.6; 54% women) supported the predictions: refraining from catastrophic thinking was negatively correlated with depression, social anxiety, phobia, generalized anxiety, and obsession and compulsion. Repetitive negative thinking mediated the negative relationship between refraining from catastrophic thinking and latent factors underlying psychological distress (Fear and Distress). Refraining from catastrophic thinking may be negatively correlated with psychological distress due to its negative relation to repetitive negative thinking.

Emotional intensity reduces later generalized anxiety disorder symptoms when fear of anxiety and negative problem-solving appraisal are low.

While research based on the emotion dysregulation model indicates a positive relationship between intense emotions and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) symptoms, emotion-focused intervention involves the use of techniques to enhance emotional experiences, based on the notion that GAD patients are engaging in avoidance strategies. To reveal the conditions under which intense emotions lead to reduced GAD symptoms, we designed a longitudinal study to monitor changes in GAD symptoms among students (N = 129) over 3 months. Our focus was on possible moderators of the effect of emotional intensity. Results indicated that when fear of emotions and negative appraisals about problem solving were low, negative emotional intensity reduced later GAD symptoms. Moreover, under the condition of high responsibility to continue thinking, emotional intensity tended to reduce later GAD symptoms. Results suggest that reduced fear of emotions and reduced negative appraisals about problem solving may enhance the use of emotional processing techniques (e.g., emotional exposure). The interaction between responsibility to continue thinking and emotional intensity requires further examination.

Common Factors of Meditation, Focusing, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy: Longitudinal Relation of Self-Report Measures to Worry, Depressive, and Obsessive-Compulsive Symptoms Among Nonclinical Students.

Meditation has a long tradition with substantial implications for many psychotherapies. It has been postulated that meditation may cultivate therapeutic processes similar to various psychotherapies. A previous study used joint factor analysis to identify five common factors of items of scales purported to capture psychological states cultivated by meditation, focusing, and cognitive behavioral therapy, namely, refraining from catastrophic thinking, logical objectivity, self-observation, acceptance, and detached coping. The present study aimed to extend previous research on these five factors by examining their longitudinal relationship to symptoms of depression, obsession and compulsion, and worrying, with two correlational surveys without intervention. Potential mediators of their effect on worrying were also explored. Longitudinal questionnaire studies from two student samples (n = 157 and 232, respectively) found that (a) detached coping was inversely related to obsessive-compulsive symptoms about 5 weeks later; (b) detached coping was inversely related to depressive symptoms about 5 weeks later; (c) refraining from catastrophic thinking was inversely related to worrying, while self-observation was positively related to worrying about 2 months later; and (d) the relation of refraining from catastrophic thinking to worrying was mediated by negative beliefs about worrying, while the relation of self-observation to worrying was mediated by negative beliefs about worrying and monitoring of one's cognitive processes. As refraining from catastrophic thinking involves being detached from one's negative thinking and detached coping involves distancing oneself from external circumstances and problems, the results suggest that distancing attitudes are useful for long-term reduction of various psychological symptoms.

[Dispositional mindfulness modulates automatic transference of disgust into moral judgment].

Previous studies showed that incidental feelings of disgust could make moral judgments more severe. In the present study, we investigated whether individual differences in mindfulness modulated automatic transference of disgust into moral judgment. Undergraduates were divided into high- and low-mindfulness groups based on the mean score on each subscale of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ). Participants were asked to write about a disgusting experience or an emotionally neutral experience, and then to evaluate moral (impersonal vs. high-conflict personal) and non-moral scenarios. The results showed that the disgust induction made moral judgments more severe for the low "acting with awareness" participants, whereas it did not influence the moral judgments of the high "acting with awareness" participants irrespective of type of moral dilemma. The other facets of the FFMQ did not modulate the effect of disgust on moral judgment. These findings suggest that being present prevents automatic transference of disgust into moral judgment even when prepotent emotions elicited by the thought of killing one person to save several others and utilitarian reasoning conflict.

Socially anxious individuals with low working memory capacity could not inhibit the goal-irrelevant information.

Socially anxious individuals are interfered by distractors. Recent work has suggested that low working memory capacity and inappropriate temporary goal induce attention to distractors. We investigated the effects of working memory capacity and temporary goal on attention to distractors in social anxiety. Participants viewed a rapid serial visual presentation, in which participants reported the identity of a single target letter drawn in red. Distractors appeared before the target was presented. When the color of distractors was red (i.e., goal-relevant stimuli), low-capacity individuals were strongly interfered by the distractors compared to high-capacity individuals regardless of social anxiety. When the color of distractors was goal-irrelevant, low-capacity and high socially anxious individuals were strongly interfered by the distractors. These results suggest that socially anxious individuals with low working memory capacity could not inhibit the goal-irrelevant information and direct attention to distractors.

Relationships among refraining from catastrophic thinking, worrying, and metacognitive beliefs.

The Refraining from Catastrophic Thinking Scale is a self-report measure that assesses the perceived skills to detach from and to suspend negative thinking that were fostered in cognitive behavioral therapy. This study examined the relationships between this scale and the variables in Wells' metacognitive model of emotional disorders, and worrying. A survey of 470 students revealed that the Refraining from Catastrophic Thinking was negatively related to negative metacognitive beliefs about worrying, and that it explained additional variance in worrying beyond the existing metacognitive variables. Therefore, the Refraining from Catastrophic Thinking is unique in predicting worrying and has a meaningful relationship with metacognitive beliefs. It may thus be a useful tool for examining therapeutic change in metacognitive and related therapies.

The dual effects of critical thinking disposition on worry.

This study investigated the relationship between disposition (people's consistent motivation) toward critical thinking (CT) and worrying. In spite of its connection to psychopathology, worry is thought to represent an effort at problem-solving. Moreover, worry has been found to be underpinned by cognitive development, leading us to predict a positive relationship between worry and CT disposition. On the other hand, cognitive behavioral therapy, which involves techniques similar to CT, has been shown to be effective in reducing worrying, suggesting that increasing CT disposition decreases worrying. This study attempted to reconcile these seemingly contrasting predictions about the relationship between CT disposition and worrying by using multiple mediator analysis. A model was proposed wherein the mediators, responsibility to continue thinking and detached awareness of negative thinking, were related to two opposing predictions. The former is thought to lead to enhanced worrying and the latter to reduced worrying, with both positively related to CT disposition. A questionnaire study with university students (N = 760) revealed that CT disposition enhanced worrying by obliging people to continue thinking about a problem, but that it also reduced worrying by enhancing the detached and objective awareness of their negative thoughts. This study thus demonstrated the dual effects of CT disposition on worrying through different mediators. Thus, when enhancing CT disposition, it is important for educators to be aware of possible disadvantages apart from its worry-reducing effect. Future studies should therefore examine the underlying mechanisms of these two effects of CT disposition.

Repeated short presentations of morphed facial expressions change recognition and evaluation of facial expressions.

This study investigated whether sensitivity to and evaluation of facial expressions varied with repeated exposure to non-prototypical facial expressions for a short presentation time. A morphed facial expression was presented for 500 ms repeatedly, and participants were required to indicate whether each facial expression was happy or angry. We manipulated the distribution of presentations of the morphed facial expressions for each facial stimulus. Some of the individuals depicted in the facial stimuli expressed anger frequently (i.e., anger-prone individuals), while the others expressed happiness frequently (i.e., happiness-prone individuals). After being exposed to the faces of anger-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals' angry faces. Further, after being exposed to the faces of happiness-prone individuals, the participants became less sensitive to those individuals' happy faces. We also found a relative increase in the social desirability of happiness-prone individuals after exposure to the facial stimuli.

Impaired attentional disengagement from stimuli matching the contents of working memory in social anxiety.

Although many cognitive models in anxiety propose that an impaired top-down control enhances the processing of task-irrelevant stimuli, few studies have paid attention to task-irrelevant stimuli under a cognitive load task. In the present study, we investigated the effects of the working memory load on attention to task-irrelevant stimuli in trait social anxiety. The results showed that as trait social anxiety increased, participants were unable to disengage from task-irrelevant stimuli identical to the memory cue under low and high working memory loads. Impaired attentional disengagement was positively correlated with trait social anxiety. This impaired attentional disengagement was related to trait social anxiety, but not state anxiety. Our findings suggest that socially anxious people have difficulty in disengaging attention from a task-irrelevant memory cue owing to an impaired top-down control under a working memory load.

High visual working memory capacity in trait social anxiety.

Working memory capacity is one of the most important cognitive functions influencing individual traits, such as attentional control, fluid intelligence, and also psychopathological traits. Previous research suggests that anxiety is associated with impaired cognitive function, and studies have shown low verbal working memory capacity in individuals with high trait anxiety. However, the relationship between trait anxiety and visual working memory capacity is still unclear. Considering that people allocate visual attention more widely to detect danger under threat, visual working memory capacity might be higher in anxious people. In the present study, we show that visual working memory capacity increases as trait social anxiety increases by using a change detection task. When the demand to inhibit distractors increased, however, high visual working memory capacity diminished in individuals with social anxiety, and instead, impaired filtering of distractors was predicted by trait social anxiety. State anxiety was not correlated with visual working memory capacity. These results indicate that socially anxious people could potentially hold a large amount of information in working memory. However, because of an impaired cognitive function, they could not inhibit goal-irrelevant distractors and their performance decreased under highly demanding conditions.

Liquid phase immunoassays utilizing magnetic markers and SQUID magnetometer.

BACKGROUND: Immunoassays are one main detection system used in the field of clinical chemistry. Recent developments of a new detection method utilizing a magnetic marker and magnetic sensor have enabled rapid and sensitive immunoassay without the need for bound/free (BF) separation. METHODS: Newly-synthesized conjugated avidin was used as the magnetic marker for quantitative analysis of human interleukin-8 (hIL-8) and immunoglobulin E (hIgE) in several media. A superconducting quantum interference device sensor detected the magnetic fields from markers fixed to antigens by the sandwich method. Magnetic signals from unbound markers were nearly zero due to Brownian rotation. RESULTS: Our magnetic immunoassay could detect four attomoles of model proteins (hIL-8, hIgE) in phosphate buffer without BF separation. Using our standard curve, the range of protein detected ranged from 40 femtomoles to 4 attomoles, and we observed a strong association between protein amounts and magnetic signals from the bound markers. The homogeneous immunoassay could also quantify three hundred cells from the fungus Candida albicans in phosphate buffer. CONCLUSIONS: The present study demonstrates the ability of magnetic markers for measuring biological targets without BF separation. This detection system has great potential for use as the next generation's analytical system.

[Development of liquid phase immunoassay system using magnetic nanoparticles].

Biological immunoassay is a major detection system of biological materials from patient samples. Our group has been developing a highly sensitive immunoassay system using magnetic nanoparticles made from Fe3O4. Since unbound magnetic markers randomly move in solvent due to Brownian motion, there is no magnetic signal from unbound magnetic markers; therefore, the separation of bound from unbound markers (B/F separation) is not required. This advantage means that the detection time is greatly decreased in comparison with a normal method using fluorescent/enzyme reagent. In this paper, we describe the configuration of the developed system and demonstrate the performance of the detection of magnetic nanoparticles.

Responsibility to continue thinking and worrying: evidence of incremental validity.

This two-part study examined the role of the responsibility to continue thinking, beliefs that one needs prolonged thinking about stressful problems, in the prediction of excessive worry. This construct is considered to reflect high levels of motivation to continue inflexible thinking and the use of rigid stop rules. In Study 1, 122 students completed questionnaires. A regression analysis revealed that responsibility accounted for a unique variance beyond negative meta-cognitive beliefs about worry. One hundred and fifty students participated in Study 2, where worry was regressed on emotional instability (Neuroticism), responsibility, and other worry-related cognitive variables (intolerance of uncertainty, positive/negative meta-cognitive beliefs, poor problem-solving orientation, and cognitive avoidance). Again, responsibility was a significant predictor, after controlling for emotional instability (Neuroticism) and other worry-related cognitions. These results indicate the incremental validity of the responsibility to continue thinking.