Dispositional Mindfulness as a Moderator of Electrocortical and Behavioral Responses to Affective Social Stimuli

Numerous studies have linked dispositional mindfulness to enhanced emotion regulation. The present research examined dispositional mindfulness as a predictor of emotion regulation in social affective contexts. Participants completed passive viewing and Emotional Go/No-Go tasks involving social affective stimuli (happy, neutral, and fearful facial expressions). Event-related potentials (ERPs) and behavioral responses were examined to discern whether dispositional mindfulness predicted differential neural and behavioral responses indexing attention to, awareness of, and inhibitory control over automatic responses to affective social stimuli. Dispositional mindfulness predicted larger (more negative) N100, N200 and No-Go N200 amplitudes during the Emotional Go/No-Go task, but was not associated with amplitude of the Late Positive Potential during the passive viewing task. Dispositional mindfulness also predicted faster response times (RT) to target stimuli that were not attributable to a speed-accuracy tradeoff. No relations were found between mindfulness and RT variability nor accuracy. Implications for understanding mindfulness and early processes of social emotion regulation are discussed.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Psychology

Year dc:date.available

2013

Author dc:creator

• Quaglia, Jordan T.

Contributors dc:contributor

• Kirk Warren Brown

• Mindfulness
• N100
• N200
• Go/No-Go
• Emotion
• Psychology
• Social and Behavioral Sciences

Statement dc:rights

• © The Author

Identifier

https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/etd/489

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarscompass.vcu.edu:etd-1488