Background: Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) has been attributed significant negative associations with depression in meta-analyses, yet little is known about the mechanisms of action. Some studies...Show moreBackground: Loving Kindness Meditation (LKM) has been attributed significant negative associations with depression in meta-analyses, yet little is known about the mechanisms of action. Some studies implicate a coping style characterized by self-compassion as potential mediator. Aim: We are interested in whether the LKM intervention has the potential to decrease depression and increase self-compassion. Self-compassionate coping was examined as a mediating variable. Method: A sample of 57 university students underwent a pretest-posttest design. Self-compassion was measured with the Self-Compassion Scale, depression with the Patient Health Questionnaire – 9, and self-compassionate coping was assessed using the Self-Compassionate Coping Measure. Participants completed all measures at both pre and posttest. Between both measurement moments there were 12 days in which participants followed either the LKM or a control exercise daily. Repeated measures ANOVAs and a simple mediation analysis were performed. Results: Over time, both groups decreased in their depression and increased in their self-compassion scores. Assignment to the LKM condition did not result in significantly higher self-compassion scores compared to control. We found a significant effect of LKM for depressive symptoms only when controlling for successfully completed homework exercises. Self-Compassionate coping did not emerge as significant mediator in our statistical analysis. Conclusion: The results indicate a mixed picture regarding the efficacy of LKM in reducing depression and increasing self-compassion. Both conditions were possibly too similar and involved helpful elements. Further research into the antidepressant utility of LKM is warranted to understand the exact mechanisms of action.Show less
There is a wealth of literature describing the role of eye contact in parent-child bonding between mothers and their infant children and in interpersonal bonding between adults. However, it is...Show moreThere is a wealth of literature describing the role of eye contact in parent-child bonding between mothers and their infant children and in interpersonal bonding between adults. However, it is unclear how making eye contact with parents during adolescence – a period during which individuals seek independence from their parents– relates to feelings of connectedness to parents. This study examined adolescents’ (n=61; 67.2% female) subjective feelings of connectedness, liking of interaction-partner and mood after receiving a direct and an averted gaze from their parent and other unfamiliar people. It also explored whether individual differences in attachment to parents moderate increases in these feelings after making eye contact. Participants, aged between 12 and 18 years-old (M=16.03; SD=1.22), were asked to make eye contact with one of their parents, an unfamiliar adult and an unfamiliar peer, using pre-recorded videos. In half of the videos, interaction partners averted their gaze while in the other half they looked directly into the camera. After each video, adolescents were asked to report on their feeling of connectedness, liking of each person and mood. My results demonstrate that adolescents reported increased feelings of connectedness, liking of their interaction-partner and mood after making eye contact with all interaction-partners. Individual differences in attachment (measured using the Inventory of Parent Attachment; IPPA) did not modulate subjective feelings after making eye contact. These findings provide evidence for a causal role of making eye contact on mood and feelings of connectedness. Potentially, eye contact can be used to improve dysfunctional parent-adolescent relationships, by facilitating closeness in clinical settings.Show less
Parental stress can have a negative impact on attentional bias in infants, which is an emotion processing construct. The present study investigated if parental stress is positively related to...Show moreParental stress can have a negative impact on attentional bias in infants, which is an emotion processing construct. The present study investigated if parental stress is positively related to attentional bias towards fearful over happy faces in infants aged 5 to 19 months. The sample consisted out of 220 infants (male: 48,2%, female: 51,2%) and their 229 primary caregivers (male: 32,3%, female: 67,7%). The research has a cross-sectional experimental design. Attentional bias was measured with an eye-tracker, which measured dwell times in infants when looking at happy and fearful faces. Parental stress was measured with the stress-scale of the DASS. The analyses suggested that parental stress was not positively related to attentional bias of their infants, whereas other studies found that parental stress was positively related to attentional bias. These differences in findings may be due to the fact that SES-variables were not taken into account in the present study. Besides, attentional bias differs across age groups, but also age was not taken into account. Therefore, attentional bias is a dynamic construct, which needs to be further examined with respect to variables that influence the link between parental stress and attentional bias.Show less
