The intervention study design is shown in Table 1. The mindfulness training group was given yoga classes once per week for eight weeks. Ethical approval was granted by the Jiangxi Normal University School of Psychology Ethics Committee (202105). All of the students were divided into three groups and trained by the same yogi who has been trained in mindfulness for 10 years; the yogi has several professional certifications in mindfulness and yoga. Each session included five minutes of mindfulness breathing and rest, 1.5 hours of mindfulness yoga, 30 minutes of mindfulness class teaching and Q&A;the control group only performed 1 to 1.5 hours of aerobic cycling once per week.
Table 1
The treatment of the mindfulness training group and the control group
The research group | Mindfulness training group | control group |
Intervention process | breathing training + yoga training + theory class | Aerobic Cycling Training |
frequency | Once a week for 8 weeks | Once a week for 8 weeks |
Participants
In a health club in Hefei, Anhui Province, mindfulness levels were measured for all members who had not practiced yoga. On the basis of a free training course, the Chinese version of the MAAS was used for the measurements, and 72 members with the lowest level of mindfulness were selected to receive complimentary courses. The classes are divided into yoga classes (mindfulness training) and aerobics classes. Each class could only enroll 36 students. All of the individual participants provided informed consent by checking a box next to the statement about informed consent. The yoga group (the mindfulness training group) lost 5 members during the training process. In the end, 31 people, including 7 men and 24 women, participated in the course for 2 months and completed it. In the aerobic cycling group (control group), 3 people dropped out during the training, and 33 people, including 14 men and 19 women, finally persisted in participating in the course for 2 months and completed the course.
Measures
Mindful Attention Awareness Scale(MAAS)
The scale was translated based on the MAAS developed by Brown and Ryan, which measures levels of mindfulness based on the concept of "current attention and awareness”. The scale is a unidimensional structure consisting of 15 items involving individual cognition, emotion, physiology and other aspects in life. A scale of 1 to 6 ranges from 'almost always' to 'almost never'. High scores reflect a higher level of present moment awareness and attention in the individual's daily life. The correlation coefficients between each item and the aggregate table were between 0.422 and 0.711. The internal consistency coefficient was 0.890, and the retest reliability was 0.870, indicating that the scale had good reliability. The Cronbach's α coefficient of this measurement was 0.842.
Positive and Negative Emotion Scale (PANES)
The PANES, compiled by Watson et al., consists of two dimensions: positive and negative emotions. Each dimension has ten items on a five-point scale, ranging from very mild to very severe on a scale of 1–5. The Cronbach's α homogeneity reliability coefficients of positive and negative emotions were 0.85 and 0.83, respectively, indicating that its homogeneity reliability is high. The Cronbach's α coefficients of the two dimensions measured in this study were 0.91 and 0.86, respectively, and the Cronbach's α coefficient of the total table was 0.89.
Evaluative conditioned reflex materials
US30 words were selected, among which were ten words with positive potency, including champions, bonuses, and smiles; after re-examination and before the experiment, their titer was between 6.717 and 7.717. Ten words with negative potency were also chosen, such as cruelty, evil, and hell; after re-examination and before the experiment, their titer was between 2.304 and 3.957; Ten neutral words were finally chosen, such as countermeasures, houses, ordinary, etc.; after re-examination and before the experiment, their titer was between 4.978 and 5.500. All of the words were selected from the Chinese affective word system. We chose 9 Japanese words as CS, such as セ、ク, etc. After re-examination and before the experiment, their titer was between 4.457 and 4.978.
Procedure
The first step was to screen the subjects, and then all of the subjects were measured by the MAAS scale.
Second, 72 subjects with the lowest level of mindfulness were selected for evaluative conditioning susceptibility measurements at baseline. The subjects were alone in front of the computer and trained according to the instructions. The subject was told that the experiment was a memory study and was asked to remember as many stimuli as possible. Then, we started the EC training, the EC research paradigm of Livingston and Drwecki (2007) was used in the EC training. The stimulus combination was divided into three groups: positive US with CS, neutral US with CS, and negative US with C., Every 3 CS were paired with 10 US with the same potency, and each pair of collocations occurred 6 times, so word collocations with the same potency occurred 180 times. The collocation of CS-US was presented using E-Prime software, version 2.0, and we adopted the presentation mode of suprathreshold stimulation. The order of presentation of the stimuli was that we first presented CS (1 s), followed by a red cross in the center of the screen (125ms), then US (1 s), and finally a blank stimulus (2 s), and so on. At the end of the training, the subjects rated CS on a scale of 1–9, and the higher that the score was, the more that they liked it. Finally, baseline levels of stimulation susceptibility were measured.
In the third step, after baseline level measurement, the subjects were asked to complete PANES to measure their emotional state.
Fourth, groups were created on the basis of voluntary participation, and a mindfulness intervention was implemented.
In the fifth step, after the intervention, all of the remaining subjects participated in a posttest to investigate the training effect, including measures of levels of mindfulness, measures of susceptibility to stimuli, and measures of emotional state. The measurement means and tools were the same as those in the previous three steps. At the end of the posttest, the participants were informed of the purpose of the entire study and were given a random number of membership coupons.
Data Analysis
Data from the questionnaires were analyzed using SPSS software, version 23.0.