Search

Brief meditations led by audio versus visual stimuli can lead to differential effects on mood and cognition in healthy people. We examine whether similar effects were evident amongst schizophrenia patients. Forty-three patients underwent either 30-min image- (e.g. a mountain stream; n = 15) or audio-led (e.g. running water; n = 15) meditations or waited 30 min without instructions (n = 13). Prior to and following the meditation/wait, participants completed a self-report measure of positive and negative affect and the Trail Making Test to measure attentional shifting abilities. Participants who underwent a visual-led meditation were significantly more positive than those who underwent an audio-led meditation or if they did not meditate. Irrespective of meditation modality, participants showed significant improvement in attentional shifting abilities. Brief meditative practice amongst patients with schizophrenia may have immediate effects on mood and cognition. Future research must explore these effects in larger mindfulness programmes and with longer follow-up assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: People with schizophrenia have difficulty recalling specific autobiographical events from their past. However, the nature of this difficulty (e.g., whether these problems are only for memories that are negative or positive) and the mechanisms associated with it remain poorly understood. Methods: The present investigation asked patients with schizophrenia (n = 91) and healthy controls (n = 109) to recall memories related to several positive and negative cue words. Participants also completed self‐report measures of rumination and depressive symptoms and a measure of verbal fluency to assess executive functioning. Participants' memories were coded for specificity (whether or not they referred to a specific event lasting <24 hr) and valence (positive vs. negative). Results: Patients recalled fewer specific memories than controls and they showed particular difficulty recalling specific negative memories cued by negative words. For healthy controls, impoverished verbal fluency was associated with recall of fewer specific memories and particularly recall of fewer positive specific memories. These variables were unrelated to specificity amongst patients. Rumination was not associated with specificity in either group. Conclusions: These findings are discussed with reference to other mechanisms that might contribute towards reduced specificity in schizophrenia, such as the tendency to avoid negative affect, and the implications of this for interventions for schizophrenia and memory specificity problems. Practitioner points: The experience of schizophrenia is associated with problems recalling specific events from one's past.In particular, patients have difficulty recalling specific negative memories from their past.These memory problems are independent of executive functioning difficulties, ruminative tendencies, and also depression symptoms.Interventions for memory problems in schizophrenia must target the difficulty people have in recalling specific negative events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sleep is a support for cognitive development in childhood. Most of the studies in the field have focused on school‐age children and sleep problems, but less research focuses on the relation between the normative course of sleep and executive functions in preschoolers. Thus, the aim of the present study was to analyze the association between nighttime sleep duration and executive functioning in a 158 non‐clinical sample of Spanish participants (Mage = 56.35 months, SD = 11.24; ages 38–78 months; 48.1% girls). Sleep habits were measured by parents' self‐reports; Shape School task was applied to assess inhibition and cognitive flexibility; Word Span task was used to assess working memory; and Vocabulary subtest from the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scale of Intelligence‐III was used to assess verbal ability. The findings revealed that the relation between sleep and executive functioning was only significant in the cases of inhibition and working memory. Further, age and verbal ability were related and were predictors of inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. We consider it necessary to continue researching in this area given the importance of forming a correct sleep habit during the preschool age and its impact on health, cognition, and well‐being in childhood. In short, our results represent the first approach to the subject under study, which should be completed with objective sleep measures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Executive functions (EFs) have been identified as processes in the ability to select and apply adaptive strategies for coping with stress. This study compares executive functioning, short-term memory, and coping in a sample of young and older adults with no prior diagnosis of depression and with normal cognitive function (N = 216). The study collected measures of depression, EFs, short-term memory, and coping. Young participants scored higher than older adults on EFs and short-term memory. Moreover, in young adults, there was a prevalence of avoidance coping strategies. Scores on depressive symptomatology were found to be related to avoidant coping strategies. Older adults with higher score on inhibition used less avoidant coping. Thus, it seems that executive deficits might contribute to depression, as they affect processes for coping with stress. This finding may have implications for the role of EFs and coping in psychological well-being and successful adaptation of individuals to stressful situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CaRFAX model (Williams et al., 2007) has been used to explain the causes of overgeneral autobiographical memory (OGM; the difficulty to retrieve specific autobiographical memories), a cognitive phenomenon generally related with different psychopathologies. This model proposes 3 different mechanisms to explain OGM: capture and rumination (CaR), functional avoidance (FA) and impaired executive functions (X). However, the complete CaRFAX model has not been tested in nonclinical populations. This study aims to assess the usefulness of the CaRFAX model to explain OGM in 2 healthy samples: a young sample and an older sample, to test for possible age-related differences in the underlying causes of OGM. A total of 175 young (age range: 19-36 years) and 175 older (age range: 53-88 years) participants completed measures of brooding rumination (CaR), functional avoidance (FA), and executive tasks (X). Using structural equation modeling, we found that memory specificity is mainly associated with lower functional avoidance and higher executive functions in the older group, but only with executive functions in young participants. We discuss the different roles of emotional regulation strategies used by young and older people and their relation to the CaRFAX model to explain OGM in healthy people. (PsycINFO Database Record [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]