Mindfulness, Emotion Regulation, and Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia: A Preliminary Investigation into the Effects of Mindfulness Instruction in a Complex Clinical Sample

Presented at the Undergraduate Research Symposium and the CSBS Research Day. Introduction Background • Emotion dysregulation is a risk factor for many forms of psychopathology (Vasilev et al, 2009). • Mindfulness based therapies, such as Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) are often effective for treating disorders characterized by emotion dysregulation (Khoury et al, 2013). • Low respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) is a biological measure associated with psychopathology and emotion dysregulation (Porges, 2007). • RSA is responsive to environmental input and can change over time (Gross, 2002). • It is currently unknown whether mindfulness results in improvements in RSA in populations characterized by emotion dysregulation. Hypothesis • We hypothesized that symptoms of psychopathology would correlate with emotion dysregulation, that psychopathology and emotion dysregulation would be associated with low baseline RSA, and that a brief mindfulness task would raise RSA.