To evaluate the impact of an intensive period of mindfulness meditation training on cognitive and affective function, a non-clinical group of 20 novice meditators were tested before and after participation in a 10-day intensive mindfulness meditation retreat. They were evaluated with self-report scales measuring mindfulness, rumination and affect, as well as performance tasks assessing working memory, sustained attention, and attention switching. Results indicated that those completing the mindfulness training demonstrated significant improvements in self-reported mindfulness, depressive symptoms, rumination, and performance measures of working memory and sustained attention, relative to a comparison group who did not undergo any meditation training. This study suggests future directions for the elucidation of the critical processes that underlie the therapeutic benefits of mindfulness-based interventions.

Attending university is a particularly stressful time due to unique emergent stressors such as changes in environment, loss or diminishment of social support networks, academic pressures, developing peer relationships, and financial management. There is growing recognition that these common stressors may have deleterious effects on the mental health of students. Resilience, a personality characteristic that moderates the negative effects of stress and promotes adaptation, has been associated with increased psychological well-being. Despite a growing body of research on resilience and its clinical significance in preventing mental health problems, relatively little is known about contributing factors for resilience in well-adjusted university students. This current study examined the characteristics of university students reporting high and low resilience for elucidating its clinical implications in preventing mental health problem, primarily focusing on potentially modifiable psychosocial variables. An international sample of 214 university students recruited from Australia, the United States of America, and Hong Kong universities completed measures of resilience, perceived social support, campus connectedness, and psychological distress. Results of a one-way between groups multivariate analysis of variance revealed that perceived social support, campus connectedness, and psychological distress accounted for a significant proportion (36%) of the variance between the high and low resilience groups of university students. University students with low levels of resilience reported significantly lower levels of perceived social support, campus connectedness, and higher levels of psychological distress, in comparison to university students with high levels of resilience. Findings offer important implications for the development of resilience-based interventions among university students.

The ability to infer and understand the mental states of others (i.e., Theory of Mind) is a cornerstone of human interaction. While considerable efforts have focused on explicating when, why and for whom this fundamental psychological ability can go awry, considerably less is known about factors that may enhance theory of mind. Accordingly, the current study explored the possibility that mindfulness-based meditation may improve people’s mindreading skills. Following a 5-minute mindfulness induction, participants with no prior meditation experience completed tests that assessed mindreading and empathic understanding. The results revealed that brief mindfulness meditation enhanced both mental state attribution and empathic concern, compared to participants in the control group. These findings suggest that mindfulness may be a powerful technique for facilitating core aspects of social-cognitive functioning.

Health locus of control (HLOC) refers to beliefs regarding how one’s health is influenced by oneself, others, or fate. This meta-analysis investigated whether three HLOC dimensions (internality/I-HLOC, powerful others/P-HLOC, chance/C-HLOC) were related to both specific health behaviours and global health appraisal, and whether these relationships were moderated by gender and age compositions, individualism, and power distance. Three-level mixed-effects meta-analysis was performed on studies examining the associations of HLOC with specific health behaviour (k = 76, N = 76,580, 57% women, M age = 43.75) and global health appraisal (k = 95, N = 12,068, 57% women, M age = 45.44), respectively. For specific health behaviour, the averaged correlations with the HLOC dimensions were generally weak (r’s = −.07 to .10). However, the links between P-HLOC and exercise were moderated by all four demographic moderators, and gender composition and individualism moderated the association between the HLOC dimensions and diet. For global health appraisal, all of the averaged correlations were statistically significant (r’s = −.16 to .21), except that between P-HLOC and mental quality of life. The results further showed individualism and power distance to moderate the links between the HLOC dimensions and both mental and physical quality of life, and gender composition to moderate those between these dimensions and two indicators of emotional problems (depression and anxiety).

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