Our mind’s eye and the role of internal attention in mental life and suffering has intrigued scholars for centuries. Yet, experimental study of internal attention has been elusive due to our limited capacity to control the timing and content of internal stimuli. We thus developed the Simulated Thoughts Paradigm (STP) to experimentally deliver own-voice thought stimuli that simulate the content and experience of thinking and thereby experimental study of internal attentional processes. In independent experiments (N = 122) integrating STP into established cognitive-experimental tasks, we found and replicated evidence that emotional reactivity to negative thoughts predicts difficulty disengaging internal attention from, as well as biased selective internal attention of, those thoughts; these internal attention processes predict cognitive vulnerability (e.g., negative repetitive thinking) which thereby predict anxiety and depression. Proposed methods and findings may have implications for the study of information processing and attention in mental health broadly and models of internal attentional (dys)control in cognitive vulnerability and mental health more specifically.

By selecting from a sea of potential environmental inputs in a manner that is context sensitive, flexible, and goal relevant, attention enables adaptive pursuit of reward and escape from threat (Vuilleumier, 2005). Accordingly, dysregulation in attentional processing of emotional information, commonly referred to as attentional bias (AB), has been implicated in the etiology and maintenance of prevalent forms of maladaptation, including anxiety, depression, and addiction, and thus is a promising intervention target (Heeren, De Raedt, Koster, & Philippot, 2013; Van Bockstaele et al., 2014). Yet the field has faced growing concerns about the weak psychometric properties of cognitive-experimental measures of AB, mixed evidence of the role of AB in psychopathology, and mixed evidence of efforts to experimentally and clinically modify AB (Bar

Background Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), though reliable and effective, is controversial due to its media portrayal as a treatment with severe side effects. Electroconvulsive therapy is mainly given to patients suffering from affective disorders and treatment-resistant schizophrenia. Although past research assessed the amount and duration of memory loss due to ECT, little is known about its influence on cognition for patients suffering from schizophrenia, whose cognitive decline is an inherent part of their illness. We aimed to test whether maintenance ECT causes cognitive decline among elderly schizophrenia patients. Methods Twenty elderly (age >65 years) patients suffering from schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder who received maintenance ECT were matched with 20 controls suffering from the same illnesses that have never been treated with ECT. The match was based on age, sex, and illness duration. The participants were evaluated using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment for cognitive decline and a Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS) for illness severity. Results A lower score in the abstraction subscale was found in the maintenance ECT population (P = 0.002), without significant differences in the total Montreal Cognitive Assessment and the delayed-recall subscale scores. In the treatment group, a correlation was found between an impairment in naming and positive symptoms in the PANSS score (r = −0.45) and between abstraction impairment and negative symptoms (r = −0.56) and total PANSS score (r = −0.497). Conclusions Maintenance ECT does not worsen existing global cognitive deficits or delayed recall in elderly schizophrenia patients. The abstraction impairment was possibly due to the higher disease burden of the patients referred to ECT.

The Satipatṭhāna Sutta describes mindfulness as a mental state characterized by the objects of mindful awareness (i.e., what experience a person attends to) and mental qualities of that mindful awareness (i.e., how a person attends to experience). In contemporary psychology, mindfulness is often similarly conceptualized as a trait or a state characterized by two components: attention of physical/bodily and mental present moment experience (i.e., what experience a person attends to) and a mental attitude characterized by curiosity and acceptance of present moment experience (i.e., how a person attends to experience) (Bishop et al., 2004; Lindsay & Creswell, 2017). Integrating these canonical and contemporary theoretical perspectives, Tanay and Bernstein (2013) developed the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS). The SMS is a 21-item self-report measure designed to assess state mindfulness. More specifically, the SMS is designed to quantify subjective levels of present moment attention to and awareness of two domains of experiential events or objects of which one may be mindful, bodily sensations and mental events, during a specific period of time (e.g., past 15 minutes) and context (e.g., mindfulness meditation or other activity). In this chapter, we review the theoretical foundations, development, initial validation and subsequent psychometric study of the SMS. We also describe the SMS administration and scoring, and briefly, the limitations and possible next steps for the psychometric study of the SMS and the measurement of state mindfulness more broadly.

The Satipatṭhāna Sutta describes mindfulness as a mental state characterized by the objects of mindful awareness (i.e., what experience a person attends to) and mental qualities of that mindful awareness (i.e., how a person attends to experience). In contemporary psychology, mindfulness is often similarly conceptualized as a trait or a state characterized by two components: attention of physical/bodily and mental present moment experience (i.e., what experience a person attends to) and a mental attitude characterized by curiosity and acceptance of present moment experience (i.e., how a person attends to experience) (Bishop et al., 2004;Lindsay & Creswell, 2017). Integrating these canonical and contemporary theoretical perspectives, Tanay and Bernstein (2013) developed the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS). The SMS is a 21-item self-report measure designed to assess state mindfulness. More specifically, the SMS is designed to quantify subjective levels of present moment attention to and awareness of two domains of experiential events or objects of which one may be mindful, bodily sensations and mental events, during a specific period of time (e.g., past 15 minutes) and context (e.g., mindfulness meditation or other activity). In this chapter, we review the theoretical foundations, development, initial validation and subsequent psychometric study of the SMS. We also describe the SMS administration and scoring, and briefly, the limitations and possible next steps for the psychometric study of the SMS and the measurement of state mindfulness more broadly.