Poster #5 - Delayed Reaction Times to Emotionally Charged Stimuli: Implications for Mindfulness Interventions

• In Event: 3-106 - Poster Session 11
  In Poster Session: PS 11 Section - Attention, Learning, Memory

Integrative Statement

There is a pressing need for developmentally appropriate tools to measure the effects of mindfulness meditation (Zenner, Herrnleben-Kurz, & Walach, 2014). Traditionally, mindfulness interventions have been evaluated by looking at improvements on top-down (cognitive) measures of self-regulation. However, bottom-up emotion interference can hijack top-down influences and therefore looking only at cognitive outcome measures may not be enough. This poster will demonstrate the developmental sensitivity of a child-adapted Emotional Interference Task (EIT; Buodo, Sarlo, & Palomba, 2002). The EIT consists of presenting images of positive, neutral, and negative stimuli which are quickly followed by a signal discrimination task (responding to an audio tone). In adults, this task causes a significant delay measured by response times (RT) to the audio tone following the presentation of a negative stimulus. The adult version of the EIT has been shown to be a reliable outcome measure for mindfulness interventions with adults experiencing a significant decrease in emotional interference following an 8-week mindfulness intervention (Ortner, Kilner, & Zelazo, 2007). We believe that the child adapted EIT is a unique measure which captures bottom-up processing of emotional stimuli and is unrelated to top-down cognitive strategies of emotion regulation.

The current poster will present data from the child-adapted EIT as well as a similar emotional interference measure, the affective face Go/NoGo Task. Both tasks were administered as part of a validation battery to 42 participants Mage = 5.5 years. Consistent with our model of emotion interference relying on bottom-up mechanisms but not top-down mechanisms, neither the EIT index of emotion interference (r = -.39, p = .378) or the emotional Go/NoGo performance (r = -.141, p = .412) were significantly correlated with the executive function measure (MEFS). However, both measures showed effects of emotion interference. On the EIT, there was a marginally significant effect of valance on reaction time F(2,39) = 3.17, p = .053, however, a pairwise comparison of valance indicated that within subject negative stimuli RTs were significantly slower than neutral RTs (difference M = 71.68). In the Go/NoGo task, there was an interaction effect of go RTs and block order, such that children who received fear faces go trials in the more cognitively demanding post-switch block showed significantly slower RTs compared to their RTs on Happy faces in the pre-switch block and compared to children who received fear faces go trials on the less cognitively demanding pre-switch block F(2, 35) = 7.42, p < .05.

The findings from the EIT and the affective Go/NoGo task, along with either measures lack of correlation with the EF measure suggest a non-cognitive element to emotional interference. By measuring RTs to emotional stimuli in conjunction with cognitive tasks should prove useful when assessing interventions and programs which target both top-down and bottom-up mechanisms, like mindfulness. Furthermore, developing age-appropriate measures, such as the child-adapted EIT can highlight the development of important developmental mechanisms responsible for the careful balance between top-down and bottom-up systems.

Authors

• Julene Maniak, University of Minnesota
  Presenting Author

• Andrei Semenov, University of Minnesota
  Non-Presenting Author

• Philip David Zelazo, University of Minnesota Twin Cities
  Non-Presenting Author