A Multilevel Approach to Explore the Wandering Mind and Its Connections with Mindfulness and Personality

We propose an innovative approach to study Mind Wandering (MW), and we present an application of this methodology to study the effects of a Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training. We assessed individuals’ MW through a free association task and an attentional task with thought-probes combined with a questionnaire for the phenomenological characteristic of each MW episode. We used the Temperament and Character Inventory to assess participants’ personality traits and their associations with measures of MW. Our study was limited by the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and only nine healthy young individuals completed the testing sessions, which were carried out before and after the MOM training. After MOM, participants showed fewer repetitive and self-relevant thoughts and indices of better performance in the attentional task; the linguistic analysis of participants’ free associations showed lower verbal productivity and a decrease in utterances that expressed anxiety/stress. Overall, we foresee that future studies could replicate our preliminary findings with larger samples and in a period without a global health emergency. This multilevel approach to the study of MW may allow researchers to gain a broader view of the phenomenon, considering its occurrence, qualitative characteristics, impact on cognitive tasks, malleability via mindfulness or other psychological interventions, and relations with personality traits.

Psychometric properties of the Comic Style Markers – Portuguese version: applying bifactor and hierarchical approaches to studying broad versus narrow styles of humor

Given the relevance of humor for psychosocial assessment and promoting positive functioning, it is important to understand the relationship between humor and personality. A recent framework for describing individual differences in humor posits eight comic styles that can be measured using the Comic Style Markers (CSM). In total, 665 Portuguese adults (M age = 32.1 years) completed the CSM and Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Inventory. CFAs supported modeling the CSM as a bifactor model. Bifactor indices suggested a general humor factor could be interpreted as a unidimensional construct, but that CSM items are multidimensional. A hierarchical analysis showed the styles could be represented at several levels of abstraction. A SEM analysis suggested certain styles had distinct associations with personality dimensions. These findings suggest that the use of certain styles (namely wit, sarcasm, and cynicism) was related to individual differences in temperament and character beyond a person’s overall humor potential.

Modeling Asymmetry in the Time–Distance Relation of Ordinal Personality Items

In analyzing responses and response times to personality questionnaire items, models have been proposed which include the so-called “inverted-U effect.” These models predict that response times to personality test items decrease as the latent trait value of a given person gets closer to the attractiveness of an item. Initial studies into these models have focused on dichotomous personality items, and more recently, models for Likert-type scale items have been proposed. In all these models, it is assumed that the inverted-U effect is symmetrical around 0, while, as will be explained in this article, there are substantive and statistical reasons to study this assumption. Therefore, in this article, a general inverted-U model is proposed which accommodates two sources of asymmetry between the response times and the attractiveness of the items. The viability of this model is demonstrated in a simulation study, and the model is applied to the responses and response times of the Temperament and Character Inventory–Revised, covering a broad range of personality dimensions.

Personality dimensions of patients can change during the course of parkinson’s disease

Background Studies assessing personality dimensions by the “Temperament and Character Inventory” (TCI) have previously found an association between Parkinson’s disease (PD) and lower Novelty Seeking and higher Harm Avoidance scores. Here, we aimed to describe personality dimensions of PD patients with motor fluctuations and compare them to a normative population and other PD populations. Methods All PD patients awaiting Deep Brain Stimulation (DBS) answered the TCI before neurosurgery. Their results were compared to those of historical cohorts (a French normative population, a de novo PD population, and a PD population with motor fluctuations). Results Most personality dimensions of our 333 included PD patients with motor fluctuations who are candidates for DBS were different from those of the normative population and some were also different from those of the De Novo PD population, whereas they were similar to those of another population of PD patients with motor fluctuations. Conclusions During the course of PD, personality dimensions can change in parallel with the development of motor fluctuations, either due to the evolution of the disease and/or dopaminergic treatments.

A Practical Cross-Sectional Framework to Contextual Reactivity in Personality: Response Times as Indicators of Reactivity to Contextual Cues

Contextual reactivity refers to the degree in which personality states are affected by contextual cues. Research into contextual reactivity has mainly focused on repeated measurement designs. In this paper, we propose a cross-sectional approach to study contextual reactivity. We argue that contextual reactivity can be operationalized as different response processes which are characterized by different mean response times and different measurement properties. We propose a within-person mixture modeling approach that adopts this idea and which enables studying contextual reactivity in cross-sectional data. We applied the model to data from the Revised Temperament and Character Inventory. Results indicate that we can distinguish between two response specific latent states. We interpret these states as a high contextual reactive state and a low contextual reactive state. From the results it appears that the low contextual reactive state is generally associated with smaller response times and larger discrimination parameters, as compared to the high contextual reactivity state. The utility of this approach in personality research is discussed.

Temperamental Characteristics of Pre-School Children Who Stutter

Purpose: Stuttering is a multi-dynamic disorder and there may be various factors related to development of stuttering. Temperamental characteristics of children who stutter (CWS) may be one of those factors but there are only a few Korean empirical studies on such characteristics of pre-school CWS. The primary purpose of the current study was to determine whether there would be differences in temperamental characteristics between pre-school CWS and children who do not stutter (CWNS). In addition the correlations between stuttering and temperament were determined.Methods: A total of 28 CWS and CWNS took part in the current study; 14 male CWS [mean age: 55.1 months, standard deviation (SD): 6.4] and 14 male CWNS (mean age: 54.1 months, SD: 4.8). The participants completed temperamental and psychological measures for children, such as Korean-Personality Rating Scale for Children, The Junior Temperament and Character Inventory 3-6, Korean Preschool Daily Stress Scale, and KiddyCAT.Results: The results of the current study showed that there was a statistically significant difference in Persistence and KiddyCAT scores between CWS and CWNS. Even though there was no significant relationship between temperament and stuttering for CWS several significant relationships were observed among temperament measure scores.Conclusion: These results suggested that temperamental characteristics may contribute to the development of stuttering partly. Accordingly multi-dimensional features should be considered in the clinical management of stuttering.

Analysis of the bio-psychological characteristics of Sasang typology in Korean preschool children using the ponderal index and the temperament and character inventory

ObjectivesThe aim of this study was to identify different physical and mental characteristics among three common Sasang types, Tae-eum, So-yang, and So-eum (except scarce type, Tae-Yang) in preschoolers, to improve constitutional diagnoses.MethodsOur study included 65 boys and 67 girls from six kindergartens in South Korea. The number of children who were categorized as Tae-Yang, Tae-Eum, So-Yang, and So-Eum types were 1, 56, 40, and 35, respectively. We measured height, weight, mid-parental height, predicted adult height, ponderal index (PI), and findings from the junior temperament and character inventory 3 to 6.ResultsThe Tae-eum type exhibited higher weight percentiles and PIs than the other types (p < 0.001), and the So-eum type displayed higher harm avoidance (HA) scores than the Tae-eum type (p = 0.033).ConclusionsChildren with high PIs and low HA scores have a higher probability of being classified as the Tae-eum type than as the So-eum type.

The Different Patterns of Religiosity and Their Relationship with Cloninger’s Temperament and Character Model

The aim of our study is to create a more detailed and accurate picture of the complex relationship between personality and religiousness by describing the person’s religiousness in a multidimensional way. The sample for study consisted of 240 subjects (161 females, 79 males; mean age: 22,53, SD= 2,98) who attended church at least occasionally. We divided up different types of religiosity by the way in which they are followed: compiling the participants’ different critiques based on their responses regarding religious practice, on the data from the Hungarian Shortened Post Critical Belief Scale (Martos et al., 2009), and the Hungarian version of the Age Universal I-E Scale (Kézdy et al., 2018). For the measurement of personality based on the Cloninger’s psychobiological theory, we used the Shortened Hungarian Cloninger Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI 56) (Paksi et al., 2009). K-means clustering and one-way ANOVA-s were used to explore and compare the patterns. The results of the study show that in terms of personality traits, there are significant differences between the different types of religiousness. Therefore, interpreting and analyzing piety and personality as a complex system could help to understand religious practice and education in a more differentiated way.

Comparison of Psychological and Cognitive Characteristics between Professional Internet Game Players and Professional Baseball Players

The esports industry is increasing in popularity and is now played at the professional level. We hypothesized that esports players may have a significant advantage over the general population in terms of psychological and cognitive characteristics, which may be similar to that of professional baseball players. We recruited three participant groups: esports players (n = 55), pro-baseball players (n = 57), and age- and sex-matched healthy comparison subjects (n = 60). We assessed psychological status using the Korean versions of Temperament and Character Inventory and State and Trait Anxiety Inventory and cognitive functions using the modified Tower of London, Emotional Perception, and Mental Rotation tests. Esports players had similar psychological characteristics to pro-baseball players (higher novelty seeking [p < 0.01 *, ŋ = 0.818], self-directedness [p < 0.01 *, ŋ = 0.757], and self-transcendence scores [p < 0.01 *, ŋ = 0.853], and decreased state anxiety scores [p < 0.01 *, ŋ = 0.808]), which differed from those of the general population. However, esports players showed higher working memory [p < 0.01 *, ŋ = 0.823] and slower emotional perception than pro-baseball players [p < 0.01 *, ŋ = 0.812]. In conclusion, esports and pro-baseball players had similar psychological but different cognitive characteristics.