Justin Murphy, a PhD Candidate of VUW, will speak on:

Does mindfulness change how we deal with emotional distraction?

Abstract:

To be mindful is to pay attention intentionally, without evaluation, and oriented in the present moment. Being mindful decreases stress and negative affect, and increases well-being and resilience. It is unknown, however how being mindful provides these benefits. Given that mindfulness is closely associated with the regulation of attention and emotion, one hypothesis is that mindfulness reduces distraction by emotional information. Surprisingly, this hypothesis has seldom been tested experimentally. To do so, I examined whether being mindful improves the ability to maintain focus on a letter-discrimination task while ignoring task-irrelevant emotional images. As predicted, emotional images caused less distraction following a brief mindfulness induction compared to a control condition. In subsequent experiments, I will test two mechanisms by which mindfulness might reduce emotional distraction. First, EEG activity during the distraction task will allow me to determine whether mindfulness enhances goal-directed attention and elucidate the attentional control mechanisms involved. Second, physiological responses during a new picture viewing task will allow me to test an alternative mechanism: that being mindful decreases emotional evaluation, making emotional distractors less captivating.

Supervisor/s: Assoc. Professor Gina Grimshaw and Dr David Carmel

Staff and postgraduate students are cordially invited to attend. There will be an opportunity at the end of the presentation for audience to observe the the panel questioning the candidate about the presentation and proposed research, and for audience members themselves to ask questions of the candidate.