Building a More Diverse and Inclusive Science: Mindfulness-Based Approaches for Latinx Individuals.

Objectives: This article represents a call to action for the mindfulness field to be more diverse and inclusive of Latinx individuals. Building a diverse and inclusive science around mindfulness-based approaches (MBAs) that considers important group-level cultural and contextual information is an important public health challenge in need of innovative solutions. Methods: We describe ways that the Latinx population is poised to benefit from MBAs. We further elucidate challenges, describe potential solutions, and outline a research agenda that may hold promise for building a more inclusive mindfulness movement. Results: Our recommendations center around developing nuanced cultural adaptations to MBAs, engaging Latinx individuals in research, increasing the rigor of scientific studies pertaining to Latinx individuals, relying on implementation science to develop innovative methods for disseminating MBAs to Latinx individuals, developing training and certification mechanisms to increase diversity and representation of Latinx mindfulness teachers, and creating mechanisms for the oversight of MBAs within this group. Conclusions: There has been a lack of inclusivity of Latinx individuals in the field of MBAs with regards to research studies, barriers to access for economically disadvantaged groups, and lack of diversity in its workforce. Considering the recognition of adverse social drivers of health that generate chronic stress and health disparities, the Latinx population is especially poised to benefit greatly from MBAs. A diverse and inclusive mindfulness science holds promise to enhance the effectiveness, acceptability, feasibility, and wide-scale dissemination and implementation of MBAs.

Yoga v. health education for attentional processes relevant to major depressive disorder.

OBJECTIVES: Research has shown that yoga may be an effective adjunctive treatment for persistent depression, the benefits of which may accumulate over time. The objectives of this study were to evaluate the following in a sample of persistently depressed individuals: whether yoga increases mindfulness and whether yoga attenuates rumination. Rumination and mindfulness both represent attentional processes relevant for onset and maintenance of depressive episodes. METHODS: One-hundred-ten individuals who were persistently depressed despite ongoing use of pharmacological treatment were recruited into an RCT comparing yoga with a health education class. Mindfulness and rumination were assessed at baseline and across 3 time points during the ten-week intervention. RESULTS: Findings demonstrate that, compared to health education, yoga was associated with higher mean levels of the observe facet of mindfulness relative to the control group during the intervention period (p =.004, d =0.38), and that yoga was associated with a faster rate of increase in levels of acting with awareness over the intervention period (p= .03, f2 =0.027). There were no differences between intervention groups with respect to rumination. CONCLUSIONS: Results suggest a small effect of yoga on components of mindfulness during a 10-week intervention period. Previous research suggests that continued assessment after the initial 10 weeks may reveal continued improvement. Future research may also examine moderators of the impact of yoga on mindfulness and rumination, including clinical factors such as depression severity or depression chronicity, or demographic factors such as age.

Shedding light on the specificity of school-aged children's attachment narratives.

A prominent research tradition within the field of attachment involves analyzing relationship narratives for qualities thought to reveal important information regarding the organization of attachment, and the different ways in which attachment insecurity presents. Researchers increasingly use this method to assess attachment in middle childhood, but further work needs to be conducted with respect to the divergent validity of attachment narratives in this age range. Thus, the current study examined differential associations between children's discursive style and linguistic behavior when completing an attachment interview (Child Attachment Interview [CAI]) and Non-Relational Interview (NRI). In addition, the discriminant validity of attachment narratives was assessed in predicting children's physiological reactivity to a relational challenge. Children (N = 125) completed the NRI and the CAI at Time 1. A subset of the original sample (n = 64) completed another assessment 1.5 years later involving simulated non-relational and relational challenges. While narrative coherence was moderately associated across the two interviews, CAI narrative coherence uniquely predicted reactivity to a relational probe. We discuss implications for understanding children's narrative styles across discourse topics as well as the significance of the results for using attachment interviews in this age range.

Parental Anxiety Prospectively Predicts Fearful Children's Physiological Recovery from Stress.

Parental anxiety confers risk for the development of an anxiety disorder in children, and this risk may be transmitted through children's stress reactivity. Further, some children may be more vulnerable to reactivity in the presence of parent factors such as anxiety. In this study, we examined whether parents' anxiety symptoms prospectively predict school-aged children's physiological reactivity following stress, assessed through their electrodermal activity (galvanic skin response) during recovery from a performance challenge task, and whether this varies as a function of children's temperamental fearfulness. Parents and their children (N = 68) reported on their anxiety symptoms at Time 1 of data collection, and parents characterized the extent to which their children had fearful temperaments. At Time 2 children completed the performance challenge and two recovery tasks. Greater parental anxiety symptom severity at Time 1 predicted children's higher electrodermal response during both recovery tasks following the failure task. Further, these effects are specific to children with medium and high fearful temperament, whereas for children low in fearfulness, the association between parent anxiety and child reactivity is not significant. Findings provide additional evidence for the diathesis-stress hypothesis and are discussed in terms of their contribution to the literature on developmental psychopathology.

Dismissing child attachment and discordance for subjective and neuroendocrine responses to vulnerability.

Emerging evidence suggests that as with adults, dismissing children underreport their psychological distress relative to physiological indicators of their experience (startle response, neural signals). In this report, we extend these observations to neuroendocrine reactivity. One hundred and six 8-12-year-old children completed the Child Attachment Interview and a computer-based paradigm comprised of vignettes reflecting vulnerability in interpersonal contexts. Dismissing children's cortisol responses remained comparable from pre-to-post paradigm, while secure children's cortisol responses decreased from pre-to-post paradigm. Furthermore, compared to secure children, dismissing children reported less distress than their cortisol response would suggest. Implications for dismissing children's coping and self-regulation are discussed.

School-aged children's depressive rumination is associated with their reactivity to sadness but not fear.

It is well documented that a ruminative response style is associated with greater risk for depression in children and adults. Less is known about the association between rumination and stress reactivity, particularly among children. Similarly, the extent to which depressive rumination is associated with general reactivity to negative emotion, or more specifically to sadness, has not received sufficient attention. The current study examines the association between depressive rumination and stress reactivity in response to a mild laboratory stressor in school-aged children. A diverse sample of 94 children between the ages of 8 and 12 participated in this 2-session study in which they reported on their tendency to engage in depressive rumination. Children's cardiovascular reactivity (operationalized as respiratory sinus arrhythmia) was assessed while they completed a task in which they read vignettes depicting children experiencing sadness and fear. Children also reported on their emotional reaction to the sad and fear vignettes, and we assessed the length of time it took them to respond to these questions (reaction time). Rumination was associated with greater decreases in respiratory sinus arrhythmia and greater increases in self-reported negative emotion in response to the sad but not the fear vignettes, suggesting that children higher in depressive rumination experienced more subjective arousal and showed evidence of greater regulatory effort when contemplating sadness. Rumination was associated with slower reaction time to both types of vignettes in one condition of the paradigm only. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for rumination and stress reactivity.

EMOTIONALLY AVOIDANT LANGUAGE IN THE PARENTING INTERVIEWS OF SUBSTANCE-DEPENDENT MOTHERS: ASSOCIATIONS WITH REFLECTIVE FUNCTIONING, RECENT SUBSTANCE USE, AND PARENTING BEHAVIOR.

Parenting and emotion regulation are two known, and potentially interrelated, areas of impairment among substance-abusing mothers. In this study, we examine substance -abusing mothers' (positive and negative) emotion language word use during their discussion of negative parenting experiences on the Parent Development Interview for its association with reflective functioning (RF), recent substance-use history, and sensitivity to child cues. Within a sample of 47 methadone-maintained mothers, we evaluate the hypothesis that linguistic evidence of emotional avoidance (more frequent positive feeling words and less frequent negative emotion words) will be associated with lower RF, more recent substance use, and more insensitive parenting. Further, we evaluate whether language use mediates the association between self-focused RF and insensitive parenting. Results of hierarchical regressions suggest that more frequent positive feeling word use, but not negative emotion word use, is associated with lower RF, more recent substance use, and lower sensitivity to child cues. Positive feeling word use partially mediates the association between self-focused RF and insensitive parenting. Results are discussed in the context of their contribution to the literature on emotion and parenting in substance-abusing populations.