Mindfulness, Sustained Attention and Post-Traumatic Stress in Tsunami Survivors
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17140/PCSOJ-2-115Keywords:
Mindfulness, Attention, Disaster, Trauma, Commission errors, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)Abstract
Mindfulness involves various attention skills, including the ability to sustain and focus attention. We investigated the association between trait mindfulness and errors of omission and commission in a sustained attention task in individuals who had been exposed to the trauma of a natural disaster. A positive association between mindfulness and sustained attention was hypothesized. A disaster-exposed group (n=25) consisting of Norwegian tourists who survived the 2004 Southeast Asian tsunami in a location with high mortality rates was recruited. A control group (n=24) matched for gender, age and educational level was included in the study. Trait mindfulness and sustained attention were measured with the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and the Conner’s Continuous Performance Test (CPT II) respectively. In the disaster-exposed group but not in the control group, there was a significant negative association between mindfulness and number of commission errors that was observed with linear regression after adjustment for gender, age, years of education, depression, anxiety, intelligence quotient (IQ), and amount of post-traumatic stress symptoms. To examine the associations between the five factors of mindfulness: observing, describing, acting with awareness, nonjudging and non-reacting, and the number of CPT II omission and commission errors, linear regressions with adjustment for gender, age and years of education were applied. There was a significant negative association between number of commission errors and the describing factor of mindfulness in the disaster-exposed group, but not in the control group. There was a strong negative association between the factor of non-reacting and number of omission errors in the control group, and a weaker but still significant negative association between the factor of nonjudging and number of omission errors in the control group. There was also a strong positive association between number of commission errors and the observing factor of mindfulness in the control group. The study shows that the association between sustained attention and mindfulness and its different aspects may be affected by disaster exposure.
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