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ItemMindfulness and its relationship to race-related stress, racial identity, age, gender, and ses across multiple racial minorities(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-10-13) Mirabito, GraziaRacism is still a very pervasive problem in our nation. The literature on racism and race-related stress has predominately focused on African American populations, which is not surprising since they experience a disproportional amount of discrimination compared to other ethnicities. Nevertheless, due to the different lived experiences with racism and discrimination for each minority, I believe it is important to assess multiple racial groups’ experiences with racism (e.g. African American, Asian American, and Latinx persons). Racism can lead to race-related stress and thus to significant detriments in mental and physical health outcomes in People of Color (POC). This study took a novel and exploratory approach to understanding whether mindfulness, coping, and ethnic identity can buffer against the effects of race-related stress. Using a single-point-in-time online survey amongst 676 Asian American, African American, and Latinx participants measuring trait mindfulness, coping, ethnic identity, frequency of exposure to racism, rumination, race-related stress, anxiety, well-being, depression, and demographic factors (i.e., age, gender, education, income, and personality). Using multigroup structural equation modeling, I investigated whether mindfulness, coping, and ethnic identity mitigated the effects of race-related stress on rumination and psychological outcomes amongst POC. I found that at high levels of ethnic identity and some mindfulness subscales, there was greater use of adaptive coping skills, reduced race-related stress and rumination, and improved psychological outcomes. Additionally, I found that at high levels of exposure to racism, the cascade from mindfulness to race-related stress to psychological outcomes was worsened. Results were promising concerning the protective effects of most mindfulness subscales and ethnic identity against race-related stress. These variables exerted their influence primarily through the mediator coping. There were also negative effects of exposure to racism on the psychological outcomes. The only mindfulness variables that had a negative impact were Nonjudgement (in the African American sample only) and Observing, where Nonjudgement’s effect is most likely caused by personality, age, or some unmeasured variable, while the effects of Observing are most likely caused by detrimental effects of monitoring without acceptance. Furthermore, many of these pathways (58 out of 64 pathways) do not vary by ethnicity suggesting a primarily universal relationship across groups. The present study was successful in collecting a large sample of POC to compare across group differences and demonstrated that many of these mindfulness, ethnic identity, coping, and race-related stress processes exist similarly across multiple ethnic groups.
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ItemMemory Self-Modification as a Function of Confidence during Reconsolidation(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2023-07-31) Yaun, Jeffrey W.Students are often surprised to find that the grade they receive on an exam does not comport with the confidence they felt about their answers. What use, then, is confidence if it does not necessarily indicate accuracy? Better understanding of this question may not lie in approaching from a perspective of accuracy, but in the consistency of recall. Does confidence influence what is recalled, and does the act of recall itself provide enough of an opportunity to change what is recalled? What does this indicate about reconsolidation, the proposed process of reactivating and updating memory? This study examined these questions by providing participants with a pair of videos and a set of questions about their content, along with confidence judgements about their answers. After 4-day gap periods, participants twice recorded free-recall sessions about one of the two videos, then answered the original questions again. Results indicated that initial confidence is a strong predictor of subsequent recall and the consistency of recall, but failed to be a predictor for accuracy of recall. The predicted interaction of recall with confidence to predict consistency also failed to be statistically significant. Confidence may therefore play a greater role in the consistency of recall than in objective accuracy. The lack of a recall effect on accuracy or consistency may also indicate a more gradual process for changes in memory traces than predicted by reconsolidation theory.
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ItemDysphoria, Depressive Rumination, and Working Memory(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022-09-16) Price, John MichaelCurrent research on depression and rumination has produced mixed and sometimes incongruent results. Some researchers have found evidence of general cognitive deficits, while others have found evidence of only mood-congruent cognitive deficits. Recent research on deficits in working memory (WM) has indicated that general WM deficits occurred in a reading span task after people suffering from depression were exposed to mood congruent stimuli in a modified reading span task (affective transfer, Hubbard et al. 2016). However, the precise nature of these WM deficits remains unclear. The present study examined these effects with the decomposition of a modified n-back task into its component parts: WM updating and focus switching. Whether depression, depressive rumination, and mood were predictive of updating and focus switching was assessed. This study employed 52 participants split into two groups: a control group who completed only non-emotional tasks over two sessions, and an experimental group, who completed first a set of emotional tasks, followed by a set of non-emotional tasks. In this way, performance in the set 2 tasks was compared based on whether the participants were in the emotional or non-emotional group in set 1. This, effectively, is an extension of the affective transfer effect of Hubbard et al. (2016) to see if updating costs or switch costs or both are the driving cause of affective transfer. Furthermore, this study examined whether there were general or mood congruent WM deficits in the emotional set 1 task for these updating and focus switch costs. Affective transfer should have occurred in at least one of WM updating or focus switching, for individuals with elevated depressive symptoms, especially those who concurrently tended to engage in depressive rumination. It did not. Furthermore, elevated depression and depressive rumination were not predictive of general nor of mood-congruent deficits in WM updating or focus switching.
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ItemEcological Momentary Assement During a Remote Mindfulness Intervention Assessing Changes in Lifestyle Factors and Psychological Outcomes(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-07-26) Mirabito, GraziaStress and related issues of anxiety disorder and depression pose huge mental and public health risks in the population in general, and on college campuses in particular. Prior research shows that mindfulness interventions help to relieve symptoms of stress, anxiety, and depression, as well as decrease rumination, and increase sleep and exercise behaviors. Yet, the causal mechanisms of these variables and the sequencing of effects are unknown. I utilized a randomized controlled trial, 55 in control arm, and 57 in intervention arm (mean age= 21.39), using a 4-week KORU mindfulness intervention as the intervention arm, with pretest and posttest assessment of the relevant variables, as well as daily ecological momentary assessments (EMA) of formal and informal mindfulness practices, state mindfulness, rumination, sleep, exercise, mood, wellbeing, and stress. In the pre-post analysis, Koru was effective in improving mindfulness, rumination, worry, mood, stress, anxiety, three aspects of psychological wellbeing (Autonomy, Environmental Mastery, and Self-acceptance), and physical activity. In the EMA analysis, Koru was effective in improving mindfulness (i.e., Curiosity and Decentering), rumination, and sleep. Rumination was found to be a significant mediator between both mindfulness subscales and psychological outcomes. Furthermore, the effect of Curiosity on rumination was significant with a lag of up to three days; the effect of Decentering was detectable over two days. The effects of rumination on stressor count, depression, and wellbeing, however, did not extend beyond the same day. Exercise was only a significant mediator in the pathways from Curiosity to depression and well-being and did not extend beyond the same day. Sleep was not a significant mediator for any mindfulness to outcome variable pathway. Lastly, self-reported practice quality, both formal and informal, did not drive changes in mindfulness and did not attribute to changes in the pathway proposed.
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ItemCreativity, Depression, and Rumination(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-06-25) Trani, Alexandra NicoleAmong creative professionals, affective vulnerability and diagnosed mood disorders are higher than would be expected in the general population (Ludwig, 1995). Rumination, that is, a broad class of thoughts that recur regardless of context or task and are centered around a common theme or idea (Leonard L. Martin & Tesser, 1996) may act as a third variable in the relationship between creativity and depression (Trani, submitted; Verhaeghen, Joormann, & Aikman, 2014; Verhaeghen, Joormann, & Khan, 2005; Verhaeghen, Trani, & Aikman, 2017). Recently I proposed a model in which adaptive and maladaptive ruminations differentially influence creativity and mood (Trani, submitted). Essentially, rumination, maladaptive or otherwise, enhances associative processing by sustaining the activation of concepts within memory. Adaptive rumination supports creative associative processing by allowing concepts in memory to remain active despite being unrelated to present tasks or environments. In much the same way, maladaptive rumination works to sustain depressive symptoms across environments by sustaining activation of negative affect and related concepts in memory which would impair a person’s ability to distract themselves from negative moods. I tested the hypothesized relationships between creativity, rumination, and depression using structural equation modeling. Roughly 350 students enrolled at the Georgia Institute of Technology completed an online battery of creativity, rumination, personality, and affective vulnerability measures. I present and discuss a model of rumination, creativity, and dysphoria.
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ItemModernizing Transportable Teamwork Competency Training(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2021-05-01) Narciso, Kathryn MikelGeneric teamwork competencies have been researched and discussed for the last 30 years and these competencies are often the focus of determining an employee’s ability to work in a team While most of these competencies hold up today, there are two ways to modernize: broaden leadership competencies to include shared leadership and assess individual readiness for teaming (collaboration readiness). Collaboration readiness is an individual construct with five dimensions: motivation, knowledge of skills, cognitive strategies, self-efficacy, and enthusiasm for teaming. Participants were exposed to training programs to teach generic teamwork competencies and were in one of four conditions: Control, leadership skills only, teamwork skills only, and teamwork and leadership skills. Results indicate that the training impacted shared leadership behaviors but not acquisition of knowledge of shared leadership. Additionally, those exposed to team skills training improved an individual’s ability to monitor their own teamwork behaviors and that receiving any teamwork competency training improved intrinsic motivation compared to receiving the control group training. Findings concerning shared leadership training, teamwork training, and measuring collaboration readiness and implications for future research are discussed.