Dispositional Mindfulness Mediates the Relationship Between Sensory-Processing Sensitivity and Trait Anxiety, Well-Being, and Psychosomatic Symptoms

Abstract

Recent studies have suggested that sensory-processing sensitivity correlates to poor psychological and physical health. However, it remains unclear how this occurs. Sensory-processing sensitivity can be understood as sensitivity to sensations without the presence of intentional awareness and a nonreactive attitude, which are the components of mindfulness. We tested the hypothesis that dispositional mindfulness mediates the relationship between sensory-processing sensitivity and trait anxiety, well-being and psychosomatic symptoms. We analyzed data from 563 participating young adults living in Japan. Multiple mediation analysis showed that the four facets (nonreactivity, nonjudging, describing, and acting with awareness) of mindfulness partially mediated the effects of sub-factors of sensory-processing sensitivity (low sensory threshold and ease of excitation) on trait anxiety. Nonreactivity, describing, and acting with awareness partially mediated the effect of low sensory threshold on well-being and fully mediated the effect of ease of excitation. Nonjudging and acting with awareness partially mediated the effects of low sensory threshold and ease of excitation on psychosomatic symptoms. As a whole, the mediation hypotheses were supported, and it was determined that the improvement of dispositional mindfulness may prove effective for the psychological and physical problems of people with high sensory-processing sensitivity.

Relationship between Sensory Processing Sensitivity and Mental Health

“…As for the country of origin, three of the studies were conducted in Japan [10,12,17], two in United States [9,15], and other two in United Kingdom [14,19]. One article was carried out in each of the following countries: Malaysia, Sweden, Denmark, Iran, Israel and China [11,13,16,18,20,21].…”

“…Table 1, which also presents the design of the studies, shows that 11 of the 13 of them were cross-sectional studies [10][11][12][13][14][15][17][18][19][20][21]. One was a cohort study [9] and another one was a longitudinal and seasonally counterbalanced study [16].…”

“…A positive association between SPS and mental health problems is observed in every study [9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21]. Specifically, five articles point out adaptative disorders (anxiety and depression) as a result of high levels of SPS [9][10][11][12]16,17]. Four of these studies indicate that high levels of SPS is related to stress [13,14,20,21].…”

Psychosomatic Health as a Factor of Human Social Adaptation in the Postmodern Society

“…Lawrence (2020) investigated the psychological and social factors associated with the mental health of uniformed personnel in domestic detention camps in Nigeria. Takahashi et al (2020) state that dispositional awareness mediates the interrelation between sensitivity to sensory processing and anxiety, well-being, and psychosomatic symptoms. Trudel-Fitzgerald et al (2019) reveal the essence of psychological well-being in discussions of health care.…”

¿El mindfulness disposicional media la relación entre ansiedad y rendimiento en un examen?

“…DM is defined as the tendency to experience a present-centered awareness with a non-judgmental attitude to the events from the environment and the contents that arise to the mind (Baer, 2003). DM is related with a wide range of psychological health benefits in general and clinical population (Tomlinson, Yousaf, Vittersø & Jones, 2018), as well how DM affects people experience of the present moment at a sensory level (Takahashi, Kawashima, Nitta & Kumano, 2020) -which may increase or lessen the anxiety feelings -. The protective effects over general psychological health of DM goes beyond and also affects people's beliefs about anxiety and sadness (Sherwood, Carydias, Whelan & Emerson, 2020).…”