Vernon, Laura

Concentrative meditation derives from mindfulness practices; it is a meditation for beginners which helps meditators focus on specific stimuli such as sounds or breathing patterns. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of concentrative meditation on memory for positively, negatively, and neutrally valenced visual stimuli. In the current study, undergraduate student participants were randomly assigned to one of two conditions: concentrative meditation or mind-wandering meditation (active control). Participants were presented with positive, neutral, and negative still images and completed a free recall task. We hypothesized that participants in the concentrative meditation condition would perform best at free recall memory tasks and that participants in both conditions would remember emotionally-valenced stimuli best. Findings suggest that participants remembered more emotionally-valenced stimuli than neutral stimuli. Contrary to expectations, the mind-wandering active control condition performed better at free recall memory tasks than the concentrative meditation condition.

This study aimed to investigate whether mindfulness meditation has an effect on memory. We used free recall and recognition memory tests based on positive, negative, and neutral images to measure memory performance, and compared results between experimental and control conditions. This paper focuses on the recognition memory portion of the study. Our experimental group underwent a brief, single-session mindfulness meditation, and our control group underwent a brief, single-session mind-wandering meditation prior to being presented with the stimuli images. After being presented with the stimuli, participants underwent a distractor task, and then took the free recall and recognition memory tests. We hypothesized that those in the mindfulness condition would remember more positive and neutral images, but less negative images, than those in the mind-wandering condition. Our hypothesis was not supported by our results, which indicated no significant difference in performance on the memory tests between groups.

Research on the effects of mission trips on social awareness, attitudes, and behaviors towards social justice has been limited. In the current study, we examined whether volunteers going on a weeklong art camp in Guatemala with a non-profit, Athentikos, would show positive changes in their social justice attitudes and behaviors. Current trip participants (n=6) completed questionnaires before and immediately following their trip, whereas trip alumni (n=10) completed questionnaires regarding one previous trip. We hypothesized that participants will report an increase in social awareness as well as feelings about and plans for social action immediately following the trip. On average, all variables showed some increase from pre-trip to post-trip with confidence increasing significantly and interest in social justice related activities, evaluation of social justice obstacles and support, and empathic awareness showing trends towards statistically significant increase. Overall, trip attendees showed correlations within a number of positive social justice attitudes and behaviors.

As a new and developing area of technology, video games have garnered a fair amount of interest from the psychological community. A major area of research and debate is violent video games and their effect on levels of aggression in players. Unfortunately, due to inconsistent methodologies, findings in regard to this area of research are also inconsistent. Aside from the long-standing debate over violent video games and aggression, there is a treasure trove of psychological research available that brings hope to all gamers wishing for a good reputation for video games. Researchers have found evidence that suggests that video games can be utilized for the treatment of physical and mental disorders as well as a supplement in learning.

My research was used to determine if religiously-motivated criminal offenders should be held culpable and how offenders should be punished in a court of law. Some who commit religiously motivated crimes do not do so of their own volition (e.g., those born into a cult), some are not legally competent to stand trial, and some qualify to claim insanity by both legal and psychological standards. Psychological and social pressures exerted by cults (e.g., deindividuation) can interfere with moral and legal reasoning of the offender. I argue that only those individuals with awareness of the legality of their actions and ability to freely choose their actions should be held culpable for religiously-motivated crimes.

The emotional Stroop task is an information processing approach that assesses emotion. College students completed a neutral and a spider-word emotional Stroop task in the presence of a fear stimulus, a disgust stimulus or nostimulus for control participants. Following the Stroop tasks, participants underwent a Behavioral Approach Task with the stimulus present during the Stroop task. Participants were asked to come back for a second session where the Stroop tasks and Behavioral Approach Task was repeated in the presence of the opposite stimulus seen in the first session. Although not statistically significant, the findings of this study suggest that spider phobics take a longer time to color name spider words on the emotional Stroop task than non-phobics in the presence of a disgust stimulus or in the absence of a stimulus. However, they appear to perform about the same as non-phobics in the presence of a feared stimulus.

Adopting various mindfulness techniques has been shown to affect both psychological and physiological conditions within the body (Hill & Updegraff, 2012; Nyklícek et al., 2013). This experiment was conducted to explore the relationship between mindfulness meditation techniques and existential anxiety reported by participants. Existential anxiety has been defined within past research as “a deep concern over whether or not one is living a meaningful and fulfilling life” (Morse, 1998). Due to the nature of the concept of mindfulness, adopting mindfulness techniques was thought to lead to generally more meaningful experiences for an individual, which would decrease the individual’s report of existential anxiety. Within the present study, mindfulness training was administered by means of videos viewed upon a computer screen. Participants were instructed to complete a number of self-report questionnaires both before and after viewing the videos, and the analysis of the data collected after administering the training indicated that not only did levels of mindfulness increase post-treatment, but also that mindfulness and existential anxiety do seem to share a strong negative correlation.

Mindfulness refers to a state of mental awareness in which the individual is focused on the current moment while attempting to experience and nonjudgmentally accept passing sensations and thoughts. A previous study (Vernon, Stiksma, & Levy, 2014) found that one week following a single meditation training session, participants reported positive results. This current study examined the efficacy of the same one-session mindfulness meditation training administered online and the participants’ scores of mindfulness, stress, and social behavior and emotion. Between the pre-treatment and post-treatment, anxiety decreased, negative affect decreased while positive affect increased, and mindfulness decreased. This research will have implications for online mindfulness meditation classes, and whether the physical presence of an instructor is beneficial.

Emotional Stroop tasks are used to observe the effects of interference in colornaming
performance when under high arousal. Participants in the present study
completed the Spider Phobia Questionnaire, trait fear questionnaire and trait disgust
questionnaire. Response latency data were collected by an emotional Stroop task with
spider-related words. Although interference effects were not observed, it is possible
that this is due to the suppression effects threatening stimuli evoke in high distress
participants. Participants also took part in a Behavioral Approach Task (BAT) with a
Chilean Rose-hair tarantula and a Chilean Rose-hair tarantula’s shed exoskeleton.
There was not a significant difference between approach distance between the
distressed and non-distressed groups nor many consistent significant differences
between reported fear and disgust in response to the two stimuli between the two
groups. There were some significant correlations between trait fear and BAT
responses to the exoskeleton stimuli.

Mindfulness refers to the ability to think in the present moment and to be
cognizant of one's own thoughts and physical state. We examined whether openness to
experience and religiosity affected the experience of mindfulness. Undergraduate college
students underwent a 55-minute session learning about mindfulness techniques and
various meditations such as body relaxation meditation, a nature meditation, and a guided
imagery meditation. After completing the session, participants completed post-treatment
questionnaires and one week later they completed follow-up questionnaires. Participants
showed an increase in mindfulness immediately following the session and one week later.
They also experienced a decrease in stress one week later. In addition, openness to
experience was positively correlated with general mindfulness, mindfulness experienced
during the session, and mindfulness experienced one week later. The findings and their
implications for college student mental health will be discussed.