Nicole Riley, Psych 209 homework 4: experimental design

Variables:
1. 1st IV: Depression severity
Subject variable in between subjects design
Level 1: Moderate Depression (a score of 14-19 on the BDI-II or the Beck Depression
Inventory)
Level 2: Mild Depression (a score of 20-28 on the BDI-II or the Beck Depression Inventory)
2. 2nd IV: Mindfulness journaling
Manipulated variable in between subjects design
Level 1: Spending 5 minutes journaling about current sensory stimulation before
administration of Sustained Attention to Response Task.
Level 2: Not spending 5 minutes journaling before administration of Sustained Attention to
Response Task.
3. DV: Difference in score on Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART)
Sustained Attention to Response Task asks participants to look for certain symbols in each of
4 blocks. In each block, participants will be given points for the number of target symbols
they correctly identify to indicate attention.
Participants will be given the test before and after the mindfulness intervention.
Hypothesis:
Main effects:
1. Depression Severity: There should not be a significant main effect for depression
severity. In general, I would expect individuals who were mildly depressed to have

the same difference in scores on the Sustained Attention to Response Task as those
who were moderately depressed.
2. Mindfulness journaling: There should be a significant main effect for mindfulness
journaling. In general, I would expect individuals who used a journal to have a greater
difference in scores on the Sustained Attention to Response Test.
Interaction effects: There will be an interaction effect between mindfulness journaling and
depression severity. The difference in test scores will be significantly larger for the moderate
depression group than the mild depression group.
1. Why will this interaction effect occur?
In general, individuals with moderate depression will likely experience more symptoms
of depression than individuals with mild depression. These symptoms include problems
with concentration and motivation. Because people with moderate depression will have
more problems with concentration than those with mild depression, a mindfulness
journaling activity should help people have a greater difference in scores on the
concentration Sustained Attention to Response Task than those with mild depression.
Background
1. 1st article: The relationship between the wandering mind, depression and mindfulness
a. Research article
b. Deng, Y., Li, S., & Tang, Y. (2014). The relationships between the wandering
mind, depression, and mindfulness. Mindfulness, 5, 124-128. doi:
10.1007/s12671-012-0157-7
c. Abstract: This study examined the relationship between wandering mind,
depression and mindfulness. We used the Sustained Attention to Response

Task to assess the wandering mind, while the online thought probes were
employed as the subjective marker for mind-wandering. The Beck Depression
Inventory and Mindfulness Attention and Awareness Scale were used to assess
depression and dispositional mindfulness respectively. The results revealed
that the wandering mind even without awareness was not only positively
associated with depression, but also negatively related to dispositional
mindfulness. Depression was negatively related to dispositional mindfulness.
These results might provide evidence that a wandering mind is positively
associated with depression and mindfulness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c)
2014 APA, all rights reserved).
d. This study is similar to my own because it is examining the relationship
between concentration, mindfulness, and depression. It is also using the
Sustained Attention to Response Task and the Beck Depression Inventory.
However, my study is different because I am doing an experiment while they
only did a correlational study. Their study also differs from mine because my
study focuses on mindfulness as a form of increasing concentration when
depression is happening. Their results seem to suggest that people with
depression are not very mindful and a wandering mind is negatively related to
mindfulness. This may suggest that my hypothesis will be supported.
2. From the sources of the previous article, I chose Short-term meditation training improves
attention and self-regulation.
a. Research article.
b. Tang, Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Fan, Y., Feng, S., Lu, Q., . . . . Posner,

M.I. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and

self regulation. PNAS, 104, 17152-17156. doi:
10.1073/pnas.0707678104.
c. Abstract: Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and
systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the
lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random
assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings. This
article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation
practice with the integrative bodymind training method shows
significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly
chosen control group given relaxation training. The training method
comes from traditional Chinese medicine and incorporates aspects of
other meditation and mindfulness training. Compared with the control
group, the experimental group of 40 undergraduate Chinese students
given 5 days of 20-min integrative training showed greater
improvement in conflict scores on the Attention Network Test, lower
anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, and higher vigor on the Profile
of Mood States scale, a significant decrease in stress-related cortisol,
and an increase in immunoreactivity. These results provide a
convenient method for studying the influence of meditation training by
using experimental and control methods similar to those used to test
drugs or other interventions.

d. This article is similar to my own because it is looking at how

mindfulness activities can increase concentration or attention. It is
different because they are not looking at a depressed population and
this study used longer term mindfulness training to study the effects
upon attention. Their results support my hypothesis because after
training the mindfulness training groups had a larger improvement in
attention than the control group.
Participants:
Participants will be 100 depressed students at the University of Washington ages 18
through 21. Participants will be recruited through fliers put around campus that offers monetary
compensation. Participants will also be recruited by giving information about this study to
psychologists in the area and at hall health. This will allow psychologists to tell their patients
about the study without violating confidentiality agreements. Students will be split into the
moderate and mild depression groups based on their scores on the Beck Depression Inventory.
Then students within each of these groups will be randomly assigned to the mindfulness
journaling group before the test or not. There should be about 25 subjects per group.
Measures/Apparatus:
Participants will be asked to complete the Beck Inventory for Depression before the start
of the experiment (Dang, Li, & Tang, 2014). This will be used to assign them into groups. This
inventory will ask about both physical and emotional symptoms of depression. Based on the
score on this inventory, individuals will be assigned to the moderate or mild depression group.
Individuals who have scores that indicate extreme depression will not have their data used in
analysis.

During the experiment, participants will complete a Sustained Attention to Response Task
(Dang et al., 2014). This test looks attention. This test is separated into four blocks where target
and non-target symbols will be presented (Dang et al., 2014). The target symbols is the number
4. Participants needed to indicate when they saw a target in the block (Dang et al., 2014). The
number of correct target symbols identified will be used as a score to indicate attention or
concentration.
Procedure:
At the beginning of the experiment, participants will be brought into the lab to take the
Beck Depression Inventory and will be assigned into groups. Then both groups will take a
Sustained Attention to Response Task to measure their concentration at a baseline level. After
this activity, patients in the journaling group will be told to spend 5 minutes journaling a detailed
sensory experience while the control group will be given a five minute break. After this
intervention or break, individuals will retake the Sustained Attention to Response Task.
Because the experiment will randomly assign people to days and times so they are evenly
distributed across groups, history should not be a problem. Random assignment will help control
for maturation and the use of different tests will control for testing. Instrumentation may be a
problem because the Sustained Attention to Response Task will be used twice and increase
experience with this test could cause higher scores. This is a source of error with this experiment.
Avoiding extremely depressed individuals in this experiment and using random assignment
should account for regression to the mean. We will also account for differential attrition by
keeping track of the participants lost in each group and asking them why they left the
experiment. We can utilize this data to see if there is similarities between people who quit the
study.

Results: See Excel Document

Discussion:
My results did support my hypothesis. Because there was an intersection in the lines for
mildly and moderately depressed participants who did and did not experience mindful
journaling, this indicates an interaction effect between mindful journaling and depression, with
moderately depressed participants being more affected by the intervention. There was also a
main effect of mindful journaling and SART scores because the groups who had the mindful
journaling task had higher positive differences in SART scores. There was no main effect on
depression and SART scores.
A problem with this experiment is that the dependent variable may not be measuring what
we intend it to measure. Because the test is not directed towards depressed individuals, this may
affect scores on the tests. This may be due to individuals who are depressed showing different
attention and concentration problems than were measured with this test. However, there were
not better tests on this subject to be found. Therefore, in the future, tests about the concentration
of those with depression should be developed for similar research studies and diagnostic
purposes.
This study has far reaching implications. Studies that show the effect on mindfulness on
increasing concentration could be important for many groups of people. In particular, this study
would have important implications for people with depression. This study could show that
mindfulness helps mitigate the symptoms of depression, but also may help with symptoms that
influence academic performance, like concentration. This could indicate the possibility of
treatments for depression that allows individuals to do better in work and in school. This work

could also be applied to similar groups of people, such as people with anxiety, or the general
populace.
This study could be applied to help treat individuals with depression not only for
emotional difficulties, but also for helping their concentration. This could in turn help with
school and work, which tend to be negatively affected by depression. In the future, mindfulness
interventions that last longer periods of time should be used to see how they affect the attention
of depressed individuals. This research could also be done with other populations who have
trouble with attention, including those with ADHD.
Ethics:
There are several ethical concerns with this study. One particular prominent one is
concern with loss of privacy and confidentiality. If patients depression scores were revealed, it
could make participants feel embarrassed, could affect their employment and performance in
school, and the opinions other people have of the participants. Because of this, confidentiality
will be ensured by using numbers to identify participants and not disclosing information to
anyone without the patients permission.
Another ethical concern with this study could be information if the researcher becomes
aware of intent by the participants to hurt themselves or others. According to the APA ethics
code, psychologists and researchers are required to release information if this intent is revealed
in the study. In order to deal with this ethical problem, researchers will explain to participants
that these pieces of information would require that psychologists break confidentiality to get the
participant help.
At the beginning of the study, participants will be presented with an informed consent
form. This form will tell them what rights they have, what will happen during the experiment,

and the fact that they can withdraw at any time. Participants must voluntarily agree to participate
in the study. At the end of the experiment, all participants will be debriefed about the purpose of
the study and what was found.