Mindfulness is positively related to socioeconomic job status and income and independently predicts mental distress in a long-term perspective: Danish validation studies of the Five-Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire.

The Five Factor Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) measures 5 factor-analytically derived mindfulness aspects (Observe, Describe, Non-Judgment, Non-Reactivity, and Acting with Awareness) and is commonly used as an indicator of mindfulness in population surveys and studies of mindfulness-based interventions (MBI). Outside MBI, FFMQ scores are hypothesized to reflect relatively stable human dispositions of importance to psychological health. However, the long-term test-retest reliability of FFMQ scores is virtually untested and it remains unknown whether FFMQ scores predict psychological health after controlling for standardized socioeconomic status classifications. First, we focused on psychometric validation of the FFMQ translated to Danish in a randomly invited healthy and nonmeditating adult community sample (N = 490). Confirmatory factor analyses primarily supported a four-factor construct excluding the Observe facet. The four-factor model showed adequate composite reliability, convergent validity and satisfactory-excellent internal consistency, Cronbach αs = .72-.91. Structural equation modeling revealed that FFMQ Total scores were positively related to income and socioeconomic status but independently predicted psychological distress and mental health scores, respectively, after controlling for age, gender, body mass index, socioeconomic job classification, stressful life events, and social desirability, ß = -.24-.29, ps < .001. Second, FFMQ scores showed adequate short-term (two weeks) test-retest reliability among 99 healthy university students, Spearman's ρs ≥ .82. Finally, all FFMQ mean scores showed satisfactory test-retest reliability across a long-term (six months) interval (N = 407), intraclass correlation coefficients ≥.74. We recommend the Danish FFMQ for further use. The Observe facet should be interpreted with caution. Remaining FFMQ facet scores comprise an internally consistent four-dimensional construct reflecting long-term-reliable human dispositions of independent significance for predicting mental health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

Intact brain processing of musical emotions in autism spectrum disorder, but more cognitive load and arousal in happy vs. sad music.

Music is a potent source for eliciting emotions, but not everybody experience emotions in the same way. Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show difficulties with social and emotional cognition. Impairments in emotion recognition are widely studied in ASD, and have been associated with atypical brain activation in response to emotional expressions in faces and speech. Whether these impairments and atypical brain responses generalize to other domains, such as emotional processing of music, is less clear. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated neural correlates of emotion recognition in music in high-functioning adults with ASD and neurotypical adults. Both groups engaged similar neural networks during processing of emotional music, and individuals with ASD rated emotional music comparable to the group of neurotypical individuals. However, in the ASD group, increased activity in response to happy compared to sad music was observed in dorsolateral prefrontal regions and in the rolandic operculum/insula, and we propose that this reflects increased cognitive processing and physiological arousal in response to emotional musical stimuli in this group.