Mindfulness in Children: Exploring the Relationship

Running head: DECENTERING AND EMOTION REGULATION IN CHILDREN 1

Mindfulness in Children: Exploring the Relationship Between Decentering and Emotion

Regulation

Leanna Valles

Department of Psychology and Neuroscience

University of Colorado

Boulder, Colorado 80309

20-3-2020

Thesis Advisor: Dr. Sona Dimidjian, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience

Defense Committee:

Dr. Sona Dimidjian, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Thesis Advisor

Dr. Eliana Colunga, Department of Psychology & Neuroscience, Honors Council Representative

Dr. Rebecca Dickson, Program for Writing and Rhetoric

DECENTERING AND EMOTION REGULATION IN CHILDREN 2

Abstract

Mindfulness-based interventions have become increasingly popular within both adult and

child populations because they can lead to improvements in mental health. However, the specific

mechanisms responsible for improvements are unclear. In the present study, we investigated the

possibility that decentering, a mindfulness-related mechanism of change, supports emotion

regulation. We also explored whether inhibitory control or metacognitive monitoring, could

explain the relationship between decentering and emotion regulation. We recruited ninety-seven

children as part of a larger study of mindfulness. They completed a questionnaire measure of

mindfulness, a computerized inhibitory control task, and two physiological tasks relating to

metacognitive monitoring. Parents completed a questionnaire measure of children’s emotion

regulation. We did not find a significant relationship between decentering and emotion

regulation, or evidence for either inhibitory control or metacognitive monitoring mediators.

These findings could reflect definitional and measurement limitations of our decentering and

emotion regulation measures. Further research on child decentering measures and alternative

mechanisms of change would improve our understanding of how mindfulness-based

interventions promote change in children’s mental health.

Keywords: Mindfulness, Mindfulness-Based Interventions, Decentering, Emotion

Regulation, Inhibitory Control, Metacognitive Monitoring


Mindfulness in Children: Exploring the Relationship Between Decentering and Emotion

Regulation

Mindfulness is a broad term used to describe numerous practices and characteristics. Its

applications have become increasingly widespread, ranging from use in mental health settings

(Dimidjian & Segal, 2015), to workplaces for improving job performance (Dane & Brummel,

2014), and use in schools to help build resilience and improve students’ learning (Sapthiang et

al., 2019). Though multiple definitions of mindfulness exist, creating ambiguity around its

components (Van Dam et al., 2018), there are two main components that appear to remain

consistent across definitions: present-moment awareness and non-judgmental attitude towards

experiences (Bishop et al., 2004). Present-moment awareness generally refers to actively

observing and paying attention to one’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences as they occur in the

moment. Non-judgment involves maintaining an open and accepting attitude towards one’s

experiences and feelings as they arise.

Many of the applications of mindfulness are rooted in mindfulness-based interventions

(MBIs) such as Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction, created to alleviate stress and pain through

practices such as meditation and yoga (Kabat-Zinn, 2003). These interventions generally aim to

improve people’s mindfulness skills, such as non-judgment and focused attention, and to help

them learn to apply these skills to health or mental health challenges (Shapero et al., 2018).

MBIs generally have positive effects on adult’s psychological health, including reducing anxiety

and depression symptoms (Hoffman et al., 2010). For youth and adolescents, MBIs can lead to

post-treatment reductions in anxiety symptoms, depression symptoms, and behavioral problems

(Dunning et al., 2019). MBIs also help adolescents and children navigate through various

negative stressors they may experience at home or in school (Perry-Parrish et al., 2016).


However, meta-analyses examining the effects of MBIs with youth only show small

positive treatment effects (Klingbeil, 2017; Dunning et al., 2019). This suggests that while MBIs

can help improve the general well-being of youth, there is still progress to be made in terms of

the effectiveness of MBIs. Maximizing the effectiveness for youth is important because a

person’s mental well-being during their childhood and adolescent years impacts their

development into adulthood, especially if the person experiences a mental health disorder

(Sapthiang et al., 2019). One way to increase the effectiveness of MBIs is to identify and target

the individual mechanisms that contribute to change in MBI outcomes, which can help better

tailor future interventions.

A core mechanism of change in MBIs may be decentering, a mindfulness-related

construct (Hoge et al., 2015). Decentering is the shift from a subjective to objective perspective,

where negative thoughts and emotions are not seen as accurate reflections of self or reality but

rather as temporary mental events (Teasdale et al., 2002; Bhambhani & Cabral, 2016). In the

adult clinical literature, researchers have proposed that decentering increases one’s ability to

regulate one’s own emotions, which in turn helps with reducing distress and anxiety symptoms

(Shapiro et al., 2006; Garland et al., 2015). Emotion regulation is defined as the process of

modulating emotions in response to the environment, including how we experience and express

them (Roemer et al., 2015). A positive relationship between decentering and emotion regulation

exists among adults (Hayes-Skelton & Graham, 2013). Some evidence suggests that MBIs

increase emotion regulation in adults (Garland et al., 2015) and that decentering might serve as a

mechanism of change (Segal et al., 2019). However, the possibilities have not been tested during

childhood, a time when emotion regulation develops significantly, is a predictor of mental health,

and relates to positive social functioning (Hudson & Jacques, 2014). Exploring whether the


relationship between decentering and emotion regulation also exists in children could help

maximize the benefits of MBIs when applied in settings with youth, thus increasing positive

downstream effects for children into adulthood.

To better understand the relationship between decentering and emotion regulation, we

must also further explore the processes that may contribute to this relationship. One such process

may be inhibitory control, the process of stopping inappropriate prepotent or automatic reactions

or emotions in favor of context-appropriate responses (Riggs et al., 2015; Lee & Chao, 2012).

Although the relationship between inhibitory control and decentering has not yet been tested in

children, inhibitory control positively correlates with both mindfulness (Oberle et al., 2012;

Riggs et al., 2015) and emotion regulation in youth (Hudson & Jacques, 2014; Kieras et al.,

2005). The positive relationships among inhibitory control, mindfulness, and emotion regulation

provide evidence to inform the possibility that inhibitory control might mediate the relationship

between decentering and emotion regulation.

Another potential process contributing to the relationship between decentering and

emotion regulation is metacognitive monitoring. This is the ability to internally monitor and be

aware of one’s cognitive processes across different situations (Destan et al., 2014).

Metacognitive monitoring, and metacognitive ability more generally, is related to decentering, as

decentering involves several interrelated metacognitive processes such as meta-awareness and

separation from internal experiences (Bernstein et al., 2019). More broadly, metacognitive ability

is also related to mindfulness because metacognitive knowledge, including the belief that our

experiences and mental events are temporary, is necessary to achieve a mindful state (Jankowski

& Holas 2014). Children also use metacognitive knowledge when regulating their emotions.

From as young as five years old, they use emotion regulation strategies that require


metacognitive monitoring of their own emotions, such as pretending things are different and

learning to like a negative outcome (Davis et al., 2010). Although metacognitive monitoring

appears to be positively related to both mindfulness and emotion regulation, there is limited

research on the relationship between metacognitive monitoring and decentering with children.

The present study explored the relationship between decentering and emotion regulation

in children. Based on the positive relationship between decentering and emotion regulation in

adults (Garland et al., 2015), we hypothesized that children who are better able to decenter will

also show better emotion regulation ability. This study also explored the potential mediating

effects of children’s metacognitive monitoring and inhibitory control ability on the variables of

interest. We hypothesized that children’s inhibitory control ability would have a mediating effect

on the relationship between decentering and emotion regulation, as being able to stop one’s

prepotent reactions to emotions might help one’s ability to successfully decenter. Similarly, we

hypothesized that children’s metacognitive monitoring ability would have a mediating effect on

the relationship between decentering and emotion regulation, as being able to monitor one’s

emotions and feelings are a central part of being able to successfully decenter. The relationships

among decentering, emotion regulation, inhibitory control, and metacognitive monitoring (see

Figure 1) may further our understanding of the key mechanisms that future MBIs for children

should focus on to improve well-being.

Figure 1

Diagram representing the proposed relationships between the variables of interest

Decentering

Metacognitive

Monitoring

Inhibitory Control

Emotion Regulation


Method

Participants

Ninety-seven 9-to-13-year-old children participated in this study (M = 11.66; SD = 1.12;

males = 55). Participants were recruited either through flyers or from a laboratory subject pool

comprised of residents in Boulder, Colorado and surrounding areas. Seventy-five participants

identified as White, 17 identified as Asian, and 19 participants did not report their race. All

participants were able to understand and communicate in English. Parental informed consent and

children’s assent were obtained prior to participation. All procedures were reviewed and

approved by the Institutional Review Board. Children could pick two prizes from a range of

small toys and parents were compensated monetarily for time and travel.

Procedure

The data used in this study were collected as part of a larger study, which included

additional questionnaires, computerized behavioral tasks, physiological tasks, and word games

(see Appendix for complete list of measures). Only the tasks and materials relevant to the present

study will be discussed below. All participants individually completed the tasks in the same

order during one two-hour long session. While each child participated, the child’s parent

independently completed several parent-report questionnaires.

During the testing session, participants completed the Mindfulness Inventory for Children

and Adolescents which was verbally administered by the experimenter and then the Stop-Signal

task. Next, participants had the option to take a short break and pick out a small prize. They then

completed the Breath Counting task and Heartbeat Detection task. At the end of the session, they

had the option to pick another prize while parents received compensation.


Measures

Decentering

The Mindfulness Inventory for Children and Adolescents (MICA; Briere, 2011) was

verbally administered by an experimenter to each participant. The questionnaire contains 25

items and uses a 5-point Likert scale (1 = “disagree a lot”; 5 = “agree a lot”). It has five

theoretical subscales: self-acceptance, present-centered awareness, equanimity, metacognitive

awareness, and acceptance of internal experience. The MICA has not been validated but is age-

appropriate for our sample and appears to be sensitive to short-term changes in mindfulness for

7-to-12-year-old children (Goodman, Madni, & Semple, 2017).

To create a decentering measure from the existing tasks in the larger study, we asked five

independent raters who had theoretical knowledge about decentering to identify specific

questionnaire items that best represented decentering from the overall pool of items across all

child self-report measures. Raters were asked to sort all items from every questionnaire used in

the larger study, namely the MICA, Mindful Attention Awareness Scale for Children (MAAS-C;

Benn, 2004), and Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure (CAMM; Greco, Baer, & Smith,

2011), according to which construct best represented each item. The constructs were decentering,

awareness, and non-judgment. Raters were given the option to pick none of the constructs. Both

awareness and non-judgment were included as construct options because they are among the

constructs that the questionnaires were originally intended to measure. All raters received the

same definition for each construct. We defined decentering as “separating one’s thoughts and

feelings from perceptions of self and reality”. Awareness was defined as “noticing internal and

external experiences in the present moment” (Brown and Ryan, 2003) and non-judgment as

“having a non-evaluative attitude towards one’s thoughts, feelings, and reactions” (Baer et al.,


2008). To form our decentering measure, we included the four items that every rater rated as best

representing decentering (i.e. full consensus). All these items were from the MICA. We averaged

the scores across the four items to create a decentering score for each participant. Scores ranged

from one to five, where higher scores reflected higher decentering ability.

Emotion regulation

The Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (BRIEF) (Gioia, Isquith, Guy, &

Kenworthy, 2013) is a parent self-report questionnaire that consists of eight clinical subscales.

We used participants’ percentile rank scores on the “emotional control” subscale to measure

emotion regulation. The subscale is made up of 10 statements that assessed how well parents

perceived their children as capable of appropriately modulating their emotional responses (Gioia

et al., 2013). Parents were asked to rate each statement, for example “overreacts to small

problems”, on a 3-point scale (1= “never”; 2= “sometimes”; 3= “often”) according to how often

their child displayed the emotional response described in each statement within the last six

months. Percentile scores ranged from one to 99, where lower percentile rank scores on this

subscale reflected higher levels of emotion regulation.

Metacognitive monitoring

The first task was the Breath Counting task (adapted from Levinson et al., 2014), which

aimed to measure how well participants could continuously monitor and count their breaths for

six minutes. Participants wore a respiration belt around their abdomen which tracked their

breathing throughout the six-minute task. They were instructed to count their breaths silently in

sets of nine while pressing specific buttons on a keyboard after each exhale. They were told to

press the down arrow key for the first eight breaths and the up arrow key for the ninth breath.


Participants were also instructed to press the spacebar key if they made a mistake or wanted to

restart their count at any point.

A metacognitive monitoring index was derived from the Breath Counting task based on

error-monitoring accuracy. This accuracy was calculated as 1- 𝑢𝑛𝑐𝑎𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑒𝑟𝑟𝑜𝑟𝑠

𝑡𝑜𝑡𝑎𝑙 𝑛𝑜. 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑒𝑡𝑠 and represented

the proportion of sets where participants were either accurate or self-caught their errors. A set

was accurate if there were eight down arrow presses before one up arrow press. A self-caught

error was any set in which a participant pressed the spacebar to reset a breath cycle. An uncaught

error was any set in which a participant pressed the up arrow key without having previously

pressed the down arrow key eight times. Metacognitive monitoring is required to identify

instances of mind-wandering and to know when to press the spacebar to refocus on the task (Fox

and Christoff, 2014). Scores on this index ranged from zero to one, whereby higher values

reflected higher metacognitive monitoring abilities, while a lower value reflected lower

metacognitive monitoring abilities.

In the Heartbeat Detection task (adapted from Eley et al., 2007), participants were asked

to count their heartbeats during three timed intervals (35 seconds, 25 seconds, and 45 seconds)

while wearing physiological sensors that measured their actual number of heartbeats on their

non-dominant hand. After each interval, participants were asked to report how many heartbeats

they counted and to provide a confidence rating, which was based on how confident participants

felt about counting their heartbeats. It was rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1= “Not at all

confident”; 5= “Very confident”). To measure metacognitive monitoring, we compared

participants’ actual number of heartbeats with their perceived counted heartbeats and confidence

rating. This was calculated as the absolute mean difference between participants’ percentage


error (( |𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑠−𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑑 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑠|

𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑢𝑎𝑙 ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑟𝑡𝑏𝑒𝑎𝑡𝑠) × 100) and their confidence ratings. Difference scores

ranged from zero to one, with larger difference scores reflecting higher metacognitive ability.

Inhibitory control

We assessed participants’ inhibitory control using a Stop-Signal task (Chevalier et al.,

2014) that is frequently used to measure inhibitory control. In a child-adapted version of the task,

participants were instructed to act as an air traffic controller and land planes in clear weather but

stop planes from landing in stormy weather. In every task trial, an airplane would appear either

on the left or right side of the screen and participants were instructed to press the correct

corresponding button. However, in a small subset of those trials, a stop-signal cue (a lightning

bolt) appeared on the screen after a variable onset delay time. Children were instructed to not

press any buttons if the stop-signal cue appeared. Inhibitory control was measured using

participants’ mean Stop Signal Reaction Times (SSRTs). This reflected the time it took for

participants to inhibit the prepotent response of pressing a button. It was calculated using a

Bayesian Parametric approach that estimated participants’ distributions of SSRTs (Matzke et al.,

2013). Shorter mean SSRTs reflected higher inhibitory control ability.

Statistical Analyses

We used a bivariate linear regression model to investigate the relationship between

decentering and emotion regulation. We conducted several mediation analyses to test whether

inhibitory control and metacognitive monitoring mediated the relationship between decentering

and emotion regulation. For the metacognitive monitoring mediation model, we ran a Pearson

correlation between the scores from both metacognitive monitoring tasks, namely the Breath

Count task and Heartbeat Detection task, in the hopes of creating a more robust composite

measure. We planned to combine scores from both tasks if the scores were correlated. If they


were not correlated, we planned to run two separate mediation models, one for each task. For all

of the models we tested, we removed potential outliers and found it did not change the

significance of any results.

Results

Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics for all variables are presented in Table 1. Missing or incomplete

data was not included in our analyses for each individual task (n = 1 for emotion regulation, n =

8 for Heartbeat Detection task, n = 2 for Stop-Signal task, and n = 10 for Breath Count task).

Table 1

Descriptive Statistics for All Variables

Does decentering predict emotion regulation?

We hypothesized there would be a positive relationship between decentering and emotion

regulation. Contrary to our hypothesis, decentering scores did not significantly predict

participants’ emotion regulation scores, as seen in Figure 1 (F(1,94)=0.033, p=0.856).

Variable Mean Standard Deviation

Decentering Score (1-5) 3.68 0.74

Emotion Regulation Percentile Score 58.59 28.98

Breath Count Error Monitoring Accuracy 0.67 0.23

Heartbeat Detection Difference Score 0.29 0.18

Stop-Signal Reaction Time 326.5 60.78


Figure 2

Does decentering predict emotion regulation?

Do inhibitory control and metacognitive monitoring mediate the relationship between

decentering and emotion regulation?

Although decentering was not statistically significantly associated with emotion

regulation, we tested our mediation model because an association between the two variables is

not a precondition for testing mediation effects (Hayes, 2017). There could still be significant

effects between the individual components of our models, such as the relationship between

decentering and inhibitory control or between inhibitory control and emotion regulation. Thus, it

was still informative to test these individual relationships. For instance, if we found a positive

relationship between inhibitory control and emotion regulation, it may suggest that future

interventions that target increased emotion regulation as an outcome should be centered around

enhancing people's inhibitory control.

Note. No significant relationship between decentering and emotion regulation, p=0.86. (Scores

have been transformed so that higher emotion regulation scores reflect higher emotion regulation

ability (100 - percentile score = transformed score).


We predicted that inhibitory control would mediate the relationship between decentering

and emotion regulation. However, our findings did not support this mediation model (R2=-0.02,

p=0.75). The regression coefficient between decentering and inhibitory control was not

statistically significant (t(93)=-0.92, p=0.36). The coefficient between inhibitory control and

emotion regulation was also not statistically significant (t(91)=-0.75, p=0.45). The indirect effect

of decentering on emotion regulation, via inhibitory control, was not statistically significant ((-

8.48)*(-0.04)=0.34). Thus, decentering did not predict inhibitory control and inhibitory control

did not predict emotion regulation (see Supplemental Materials 1a and 1b for these bivariate

relationships).

To test the mediating effect of metacognitive monitoring on the relationship between

decentering and emotion regulation, we analyzed scores from the Breath Count task and

Heartbeat Detection task separately because scores from both tasks were not significantly

correlated with each other, r(80)=.04, p=0.69. The relationship between decentering and emotion

regulation was not mediated by participants' error monitoring accuracy in the Breath Count task

(R2=-0.01, p=0.67). The regression coefficient between decentering and error monitoring

accuracy was not statistically significant (t(85)=0.20, p=0.84). Similarly, the regression

coefficient between error monitoring accuracy and emotion regulation was not significant

(t(83)=-0.88, p=0.38). Based on the model using participants’ accuracy scores, the indirect effect

of decentering on emotion regulation, via metacognitive monitoring, was not statistically

significant ((0.007)*(-12.15)=-0.08). Metacognitive monitoring, as assessed via the Breath

Counting task, was not predicted by decentering and metacognitive monitoring did not predict

emotion regulation (see Supplemental Materials 2a and 2b for these bivariate relationships).


Similarly, metacognitive monitoring as assessed via Heartbeat Detection difference

scores did not mediate the relationship between decentering and emotion regulation (R2=-0.02,

p=0.92). The regression coefficient between decentering and heartbeat difference scores was not

statistically significant (t(87)=0.36, p=0.72). The regression coefficient between heartbeat

difference scores and emotion regulation was also not significant (t(85)=0.34, p=0.73). When

accounting for participants’ difference scores, the indirect effect of decentering on emotion

regulation, via metacognitive monitoring, was not statistically significant ((0.009)*(5.97)=-0.05).

Metacognitive monitoring, as assessed via the Heartbeat Detection task, was not predicted by

decentering and metacognitive monitoring did not predict emotion regulation (see Supplemental

Materials 3a and 3b for these bivariate relationships).

Discussion

The study aimed to test the relationship between decentering and emotion regulation in

children. Specifically, we hypothesized that the higher the participants’ decentering scores, the

higher their emotion regulation scores would be. However, we found no significant relationship

between these two variables. We also predicted that both inhibitory control and metacognitive

monitoring would have a positive mediating effect on decentering and emotion regulation.

However, we found that neither variable had a significant mediating effect, suggesting that

neither inhibitory control nor metacognitive monitoring were related to either decentering or

emotion regulation.

For our main hypothesis, we found that there was no significant relationship between

decentering and emotion regulation. This is in contrast to prior work with adults, which found a

positive relationship between the two variables (Garland et al., 2015). Our finding demonstrated

that decentering was not a predictor of one’s emotion regulation ability. A possible explanation


could be that decentering is not the mechanism responsible for change in emotion regulation.

Instead, there may be other constructs, such as increased levels of cognitive control (Joormann &

Gotlib, 2010), that could better explain changes in emotion regulation.

Another possible explanation relates to the complexity of measuring constructs such as

decentering among children. A limitation of our decentering measure could be how we defined

decentering, based on the wider literature. There were several apparent ambiguities across

decentering definitions. One example is the overlap between awareness and decentering.

Bernstein, Hadash, and Fresco (2019) define decentering as the “capacity to shift experiential

perspective” and suggest that meta-awareness is a process within decentering, thus making it

difficult to clearly distinguish awareness from decentering. Other researchers define decentering

as “shifting one’s perspective to observe life as a third-person observer” (Shapiro et al., 2006;

Bhambhani & Cabral, 2016). Additionally, it may be difficult to isolate non-judgment from

decentering, as decentering can be defined as “taking a nonjudgmental and accepting stance

towards thoughts and feelings...the capacity to take a detached view of one’s thoughts and

emotions” (Fresco et al., 2007). With these ambiguities in mind, we chose to focus on the

commonalities across definitions. It could be beneficial, however, for future research to

consolidate a central definition of decentering.

The way we measured decentering could have also limited our findings. None of the four

child mindfulness questionnaires in the larger study explicitly tested decentering. Also, we only

had a small number of raters who had some knowledge of decentering determine which

questions should be included. It could have been beneficial to consult with expert researchers

who have published work on decentering. Furthermore, because there is no existing decentering

measure for children, we only had an adult decentering measure (Experiences Questionnaire;


Fresco et al., 2007) for us to compare to and model after. To resolve these limitations, it is

important for future decentering research to focus on creating a valid measure of decentering for

children.

Our measure of emotion regulation may have also contributed to the lack of significant

findings because it was a parent self-report measure and could have lacked sensitivity. Parents do

not witness all of their child’s behaviors and emotion regulation can occur internally, which

could lead to discrepancies between how they rated their child and how their child behaves

across different contexts. Additionally, parents may have unintentionally rated the frequency of

their child’s behaviors in a socially desirable way. A more valid measure of emotion regulation

might be a child self-report, such as the Emotion Regulation Questionnaire for Children and

Adolescents (Gullone & Taffe, 2011), or a child behavioral or physiological measure. Future

studies developing validated and child-appropriate measures of both emotion regulation and

decentering might be able to provide more insight into the relationship between the two

variables.

Contrary to our prediction, we found that inhibitory control was not related to either

decentering or emotion regulation. This finding suggests that decentering does not affect one’s

ability to stop prepotent reactions to one’s emotions. It also suggests that when children regulate

their emotions, they may not be tapping into their inhibitory control ability, specifically the

response inhibition measured through the Stop-Signal task. One explanation could be that both

decentering and emotion regulation may not require the total inhibition of an immediate emotion

and instead may require experiencing the emotion but not letting it have a negative effect on

oneself. However, more work is needed to tease apart this potential relationship. Additionally,

incorporating an emotion element, such as manipulation of emotion, into our measure of


inhibitory control may be more effective for exploring the relationship between inhibitory

control and emotion regulation.

Similarly, contrary to our hypothesis, metacognitive monitoring was not significantly

related to either decentering or emotion regulation. While decentering may not be related to

monitoring ability, it is possible that decentering is related to other aspects of metacognition,

such as metacognitive control. This is the ability to control how cognitive processes will affect

one’s behavior in different situations (Destan et al., 2014). When it comes to decentering, the

importance may lie in one’s ability to actively control one’s actions in response to emotions,

rather than just being aware of one’s emotions. Likewise, with emotion regulation, being able to

appropriately control how one's emotions will affect oneself may be more important for

regulation than being able to monitor all the possible emotions one could have. Alternatively, it

could be the case that decentering and emotion regulation do not involve metacognitive

processes. While our findings were not significant, it does prompt further questions about the

underlying processes of decentering and emotion regulation.

The nature of our metacognitive monitoring measures may have led to the lack of

significant relationships between inhibitory control, decentering, and emotion regulation. Within

the broader construct of metacognitive monitoring, there exists more specific forms of

monitoring, such as performance monitoring. This involves monitoring and being aware of one’s

progress towards a goal and knowing when to change one’s behavior in order to attain the goal.

Both the Breath Count task and Heartbeat Detection task could be specifically measuring

performance monitoring. Thus, it may be that our tasks failed to capture the other aspects of

metacognitive monitoring that are necessary for both decentering and emotion regulation. Future


studies testing all aspects of metacognitive monitoring are needed to resolve this measurement

limitation.

The characteristics and demographics of the study’s sample could also be a limitation.

Due to the limited recruitment areas and the unique demographics of the population in Boulder,

Colorado, it is hard to determine how generalizable our findings would be to the wider

population. Future studies would need to include a wider age range and a more heterogeneous

sample in order for findings to be generalizable to all children.

Despite the limitations of this study, it provides an important step in exploring the

relationship between decentering and emotion regulation and improving children’s well-being

more generally. This study suggests that decentering and emotion regulation are not significantly

related, but MBIs have still been shown to be beneficial for children’s well-being. There are

several other proposed mechanisms of change in MBIs such as acceptance or emotional

intelligence (Guendelman et al., 2017) that have yet to be empirically tested within child

populations. It may also be more advantageous to test the relationship between decentering and

emotion regulation in a treatment or intervention setting, where participants are actively

improving their decentering ability. Due to the self-report nature of our decentering measure, it

can be hard to determine participants’ true levels of decentering ability. We also found that both

inhibitory control and metacognitive monitoring had no mediating effect on the relationship

between decentering and emotion regulation, but it might be the case that there are other

mediators at play or that measurement limitations constrained our ability to test these

relationships. The field of research regarding MBIs and children is still developing and there are

numerous mechanisms of change to be explored.


Acknowledgements

I would like to sincerely thank Dr. Sona Dimidjian, Dr. Eliana Colunga, and Dr. Rebecca

Dickson for their time and support through this process. I would also like to express my sincere

gratitude to Dr .Yuko Munakata and Winnie Zhuang for their valuable guidance and

encouragement. Additionally, a special thank you to Grace Dostart and Ryan Guild for their

support and helpful comments on previous drafts, as well as the CDC project runners for data

collection. Lastly, I would like to thank all the families who participated in the study.


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Supplemental Materials

Supplemental Figure 1a

Relationship between decentering and SSRTs

Supplemental Figure 1b

Relationship between SSRTs and emotion regulation.

Note. No significant relationship between decentering scores (higher scores mean higher

decentering ability) and mean SSRTs (shorter times mean better inhibitory control), p>.05.

Note. No significant relationship between mean SSRTs (shorter times mean better inhibitory

control) and emotion regulation (higher scores mean better emotion regulation), p>.05.



Relationship between decentering and error monitoring accuracy

Supplemental Figure 2b

Relationship between error monitoring accuracy and emotion regulation

Note. No significant relationship between decentering scores (higher scores mean better decentering)

and error monitoring accuracy (higher accuracy means better metacognitive monitoring), p>.05.

Note. No significant relationship between error monitoring accuracy (higher accuracy reflects better

metacognitive monitoring) and emotion regulation (higher scores reflect better regulation), p>.05.



Relationship between decentering and heartbeat difference scores

Figure 3b

Relationship between heartbeat difference scores and emotion regulation

Note. No significant relationship between decentering (higher scores reflect better decentering) and

Heartbeat Detection difference scores (higher scores reflect better metacognitive monitoring), p>.05.

Note. No significant relationship between Heartbeat Detection difference scores (higher scores reflect

better metacognitive monitoring) and emotion regulation (higher scores reflect better regulation),

p>.05.


Appendix

Session 1 structure

1. Surveys

a. Mindfulness Knowledge and Past Experience questionnaire

b. Mindfulness Inventory for Children and Adolescents

c. Mindful Attention Awareness Scale - Child

d. Child and Adolescent Mindfulness Measure

e. Social Desirability questionnaire

2. Computerized Executive Function tasks

a. Double-Go

b. Advanced Prep

3. Verbal Fluency

4. Computerized Executive Function task

a. Stop-Signal

5. Prize break

6. Physiological tasks

a. Breath Counting

b. Heartbeat Detection

c. Galvanic Skin Response Perception Task

7. Introduction video to optional at-home mindfulness activities

8. Prize, compensation, and debrief if necessary

Documents

Mindfulness in Children: Exploring the Relationship