"Development of a self-distancing task and initial validation of responses": Correction to Shepherd et al. (2016)

Reports an error in "Development of a self-distancing task and initial validation of responses" by Kathrine A. Shepherd, Karin G. Coifman, Lindsey M. Matt and David M. Fresco (Psychological Assessment, 2016[Jul], Vol 28[7], 841-855). In the article, several textual errors were introduced because the accuracy variable was interpreted as an error rate rather than as a percent correct. These errors appeared (1) under the Results section for Study 2, in the first sentence; (2) in the "Tests of correctness hypotheses" section of the Results for Study 2; and (3) in the fourth sentence of the second paragraph of the Discussion section. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2016-17963-001.) Mindfulness-based interventions are believed to counteract cognitive biases that exacerbate cognitive and physiological reactivity to emotional experiences and that contribute to the development and persistence of psychopathology. One process by which mindful practices may produce such salutary effects is by enhancing the capacity to "decenter"-or to adopt a self-distanced, nonjudgmental perspective on conscious experiences (e.g., thoughts, memories, and feelings). Findings consistently indicate that decentering, assessed via self-report, represents an important aspect of mental health and well-being; however, numerous researchers have called for more objective measures of skills associated with mindfulness and decentering to further evaluate the mechanisms and benefits of mindfulness-based practices. Thus, in the current investigation, we developed a behavioral task that requires mental manipulation of negative emotional (and neutral) material away from the self (self-distancing), as a means to assess the skills associated with mindfulness and decentering that likely underlie healthy emotional processing. In 2 nonmeditating, university samples, we found that higher levels of self-reported mindfulness and higher levels of 1 facet of decentering (the capacity to adopt a distanced perspective on experiences) predicted behavioral indicators of self-distancing. Results suggest that the self-distancing task shows considerable promise for capturing skills associated with mindfulness and at least 1 element of decentering. (PsycINFO Database Record