Interaction between mindfulness, insomnia and selective attention. An insight into treatment efficacy?

Woods, H. , Korhonen, V. and Biello, S. (2013) Interaction between mindfulness, insomnia and selective attention. An insight into treatment efficacy? In: British Sleep Society 25th Anniversary Meeting, October 2013,

Abstract

Espie and colleagues (2006) outlined a pathway into PI with three main components including selective attention to sleep. The University of Glasgow have pioneered this work using various paradigms and stimuli (Jones et al 2005, Marchetti et al 2006, MacMahon et al 2006, Woods et al 2009). Attention and awareness are constant features of how we function normally. Brown and Ryan (2003) stated that mindfulness is about present awareness with people low in mindfulness prone to pay attention to internal cues. Mindfulness meditation has been integrated into CBT-I with sleep-related benefits of the intervention maintained at 12-month follow-up (Ong et al 2009). Our aim was to integrate our objective attentional methodology with a subjective mindfulness measure to explore the hypothesis that high mindfulness will decrease selective attention to sleep. A pictorial modified Posner was used to obtain reaction time measurement with PSQI and clinical interview used to establish sleep quality (PI and GS). The MAAS was used to establish mindfulness level (high and low). The four trial types were valid sleep, valid neutral, invalid sleep and invalid neutral. The stimuli presented were images of items typically found in a bedroom (sleep) and kitchen (neutral). A significant interaction was found between sleep quality and level of mindfulness (p<0.05) over all 4 trial types with a negative correlation between PSQI and MAAS (r= -0.35, p<0.01). When high in mindfulness, PI were significantly faster than GS. When low in mindfulness, PI were significantly slower than GS. As sleep quality decreases, mindfulness decreases. These findings suggest that mindfulness influences attentional allocation. A mindful approach involves awareness, attention and being present with rather than reacting to a stimuli (Brown, Ryan and Cresswell, 2007) which suggests that overriding selective attention may contribute to the efficacy of CBT-I with mindfulness meditation treatment integrated.

• Item Type: Conference Proceedings
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Cleland Woods, Heather and Korhonen, Mr Vesa and Biello, Professor Stephany
• Authors: Woods, H., Korhonen, V., and Biello, S.
• Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Psychology