Mindfulness training modifies attentional bias to facial emotion and emotional symptoms.
Hui Kou, Wei Luo, Xinnan Liu, Mingyang Ke, Qinhong Xie, Xue Li, Taiyong Bi
Journal of Psychiatric Research November 1, 2023 DOI: 10.1016/j.jpsychires.2023.10.020 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Randomized controlled trial Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 80 |
| Population | Non-clinical adult volunteers |
| Intervention | Mindfulness training |
| Duration | 8-week intervention, 3-month follow-up |
| Topics | Anxiety Depression Meditation |
| Keywords | Attentional bias Emotional faces Mindfulness training |
| Citations | 11 |
| Key findings | Mindfulness training reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms and increased attentional bias toward happy faces while decreasing bias toward sad faces, with the change in sad-face bias partially mediating depression improvement at post-training. |
Abstract
Mindfulness training has been shown to improve emotional symptoms such as anxiety and depressive symptoms. However, its cognitive-behavioral mechanism is still unclear. The present study aimed to investigate the effect of mindfulness training on attention to emotional faces and its role in the improvement in emotional symptoms. Eighty participants were recruited and randomly divided into a training group (n = 40) that received eight weeks of mindfulness training and a control group (n = 40) that attended a mindfulness lecture. Before training (T1), immediately after training (T2), and three months after training (T3), all participants were asked to complete the Self-Rating Depression Scale (SDS) and the Self-Rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) to assess their emotional symptoms and a modified dot-probe task to measure their attention to emotional faces. Mindfulness training significantly reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms at both T2 and T3. After training, the attentional bias toward happy faces increased, while the attentional bias toward sad faces decreased in the training group compared with the control group. Mediation analysis showed that the improvement in attentional bias toward sad faces partially mediated the effect of mindfulness training on depression at T2. Our participants were not a clinical sample (i.e., were not diagnosed with emotional disorders), and the time course of attention components was difficult to examine in the present study. Mindfulness training can stably reduce anxious and depressive symptoms. However, it may have a temporary effect on attentional bias toward facial emotions, which plays a limited role in improving emotional symptoms.