Child Development in an Accelerating Culture: Mindfulness Training

Western society is in an era characterized by an increased speed of the general pace of life, with technological, economic, social and cultural processes influencing our daily behavior and habits (Rosa, 2003). The world today has significantly changed from the times of our own childhood, creating new ways of thinking, interacting with the world and interacting with each other. With this in mind, it is not surprising that this can have unforeseeable effects on the stress levels of children as they grow and learn in this unique environment. Mental difficulties in children that seem to be relatively recent in human history such as ADHD, autism, depression and traumatic stress disorders may be the result of these environmental conditions. One inexpensive and beneficial treatment receiving recent attention is mindfulness meditation.

Mindfulness meditation has been practiced for years and has been found beneficial for coping in adults. There are several components of exercises, and some or all can be beneficially performed. The main idea is based around the focusing of non-judgmental attention on present experiences of any of your senses, with the end goal being that a person will be more aware and responsive to what is happening in the present (Thompson & Gauntlett-Gilbert, 2008). More specifically, mindfulness practice can be broken down to:

• Mindfulness of breathing, paying attention to all the physical sensations associated with inhaling and exhaling
• Body scanning, where one pays attention to any tactile sensations associated with their body and focuses on relaxation of muscle groups
• Walking mindfulness, when taking a leisurely walk paying attention to every minute aspect of the process, focusing on sensations associated with it while ignoring external distracters or feelings about what may be going on around you, actively suppressing negative thoughts that may arise by paying attention to them and dismissing them
• Mindfulness of one sense, paying attention to just one of your senses such as sound, concentrating on each different one in a non-judgmental way as it arrives and letting it go past

This is most often taught in a group setting and can be beneficial since participants can help and support each other as well as share experiences. The group can discuss the session afterwards to provide feedback and clarify what is going on. This has been taught to children as young as 5 years old, although it is generally believed that beneficial clinical work is possible as young as Piaget’s ‘clinical operations’ stage of around 7-12 years of age (Thompson & Gauntlett-Gilbert, 2008).

Results of mindfulness meditation have been quite profound; including increased signals in brain regions related to affect regulation and attentional control and increased dopamine production (Young, 2011). The brain seems to respond morphologically to repeated meditation exercises as well, with increased cortical thickness, with particular increase in gray matter in the left hippocampus, posterior cingulated cortex, temporo-parietal junction and cerebellum. One theory postulates that reduced stress could decrease glucocorticoid levels and modulate the immune system, indirectly affecting brain change.

Burke (2009) performed a meta-analysis of measurable benefits of mindfulness meditation on different age groups of children. Students 4-5 years of age indicated significant improvement on teacher ratings, but not on parent ratings or other measures. In a study of two children ages 10 and 12 with ADHD parents reported increased child compliance during mindfulness training. A non clinical study of 228 children between first and third grade administered mindfulness training reported significant improvements of self rated anxiety, teacher rated attention, social skills and objective measures of selective attention. Another study of 31 children in grades four to six participated in mindfulness meditation along with their parents. Improvements in attention, emotional reactivity and other measures of cognition were noted. Finally, 25 children between nine and twelve years of age taught mindfulness, and reductions were reported in parent rated externalizing behaviors.

At this point there is not a lot of substantial study results, but generally children are reporting increased feelings of well-being and lowered stress. This alone is reason enough to continue researching benefits as well as introducing modifications to the procedure that may prove to be more beneficial if tailored for younger minds. Since we do not as yet fully identified the causes of stress increase, more accurate identification could assist in identifying the full possible benefits of mindfulness meditation.

References

Burke, C. A. 2010. Mindfulness-based approaches with children and adolescents: A preliminary review of current research in an emergent field. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19, 133-144.

Rosa, H. 2003. Social acceleration: Ethical and political consequences of a desynchronized high-speed society. Constellations, 10, 3-32.

Thompson, M. & Gauntlett-Gilbert, J. 2008. Mindfulness with children and adolescents: Effective clinical application. Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 13, 395-407.

Young, S. N. 2011. Biologic effects of mindfulness meditation: growing insights into neurobiologic aspects of the prevention of depression. Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 36, 75-77.

Can Body Language Indicate Personality Traits?

In my previous discussion paper, “The Tarot as a Source of Ancient Personality Theory”, one of the more interesting findings was that some characteristics of the court cards, which are believed to represent people in your life, had to do with the way people move, such as ‘graceful’, ‘swift’, ‘acute’, ‘slow’ and ‘clumsy’. As a result this researcher was lead to question whether personality may actually be indicated in how a person moves and carries themselves. However, current personality theory does not associate traits with physical movement within any of the Five Factor Model of personality characteristics. Even though people tend to use their first impressions about a person to make quick judgments regarding personality, surprisingly little research is available to further our understanding of how exactly this might work. In this paper we will examine whether any current research on body language could lend itself to personality theory and expand present knowledge in this area.

An interesting tool recently used in assessment of personality and body language is Laban Movement Analysis. Created by Rudolf Laban to describe interpret and document human movement for dancers, actors, athletes and health professionals, LMA is also being incorporated by psychologists into these theories by correlating movements with emotional state and personality variables (Levy & Duke, 2003). LMA also takes a gender based approach, finding subtle differences in the expression of particular emotions between males and females. For example, in males anxiety may be expressed by increased use of shrinking movements while dominance, achievement and exhibitionism is expressed by decreased use of enclosing movements. Females, in contrast, expressed anxiety by a decreased tendency to change back and fourth between efforts and lack of emphasis in effort, as well as decreased sagittal movements. Dominance and exhibition is expressed by a decreased use of spreading movements. This indicates that there may be some subtle gender based difference in emotional expression in body language.

Another study examined whether body language could be linked to desire for control. In a study more than 700 participants were asked to sit and stand in a variety of positions (Rhoads, 2002). In addition, the same subjects completed need for control tests and the results were correlated. Results indicated that people who crossed their arms with the right arm in the dominant position, with the right shoulder elevated, as well as which side they favor when they stand or sit was positively correlated with desire for control. Highly controlling people are associated with characteristics in the low agreeableness trait.

A very informative study covers a much more holistic view of personality assessment based on body language. Politicians giving speeches were transformed into animated stick figures and shown to subjects, who rated the five personality factors of the figure based on gestures (Koppensteiner & Grammer, 2010). Overall subjects were found to be very adept at associating meaning to gestures and movements. Stick figures with more low arm gesture activity interrupted with smaller periods of high activity were regarded as more agreeable than stick figures with overall high activity. High extraversion was associated with high overall activity and only brief low activity periods. Stick figures with greater head movements were considered less conscientious, more neurotic and less open compared to stick figures with head movements with less amplitude. High openness was associated with pronounced changes in movement direction, and round movements were considered linked to less openness. Making smooth transitions in movement from one activity peak to the next was associated with low neuroticism, whereas high neuroticism was linked to sudden changes in gestures and making these changes more often. Although further study is required to confirm if these traits are consistent, it gives us considerable insight integrating particular movement patterns with trait theory.

Overall we can start to see connections between body language and personality. High extraversion seems to be connected to more movement, broader, sweeping movements and increased saggital movement. High neuroticism could be seen in shrinking, enclosing movements, decreased saggital movement, more head movement and more sudden, jerky movement. Openness may be linked with more profound changes in movement direction, and conscientiousness with less head movements. Agreeableness may be linked to low periods of activity with short periodic bursts of high activity, as well as displaying more submissive body language such as crossing arms with the left arm dominant as well as sitting and standing with the left shoulder favored relative to the right.

Going back to the original traits under consideration we could see swiftness as a trait of high extraversion and slowness associated with low extraversion. Graceful gestures could indicate a smoothness of movement linked to low neuroticism. Finally, acute movement could also indicate increased confidence, and hence low neuroticism, or it may indicate high neuroticism if gestures are sharp and change frequently. It is surprising this has not been an area of more intense research, since the research that has been done would seem to indicate that this method of personality assessment is constantly employed by nearly everyone, and deserves to be better understood.

References

Koppensteiner, M. & Grammer, K. 2010. Motion patterns in political speech and their influence on personality. Journal of Research in Personality, 44, 374-379.

Levy, J. A. & Duke, M. P. 2003. The use of Laban Movement Analysis in the study of personality, emotional state and movement style: An exploratory investigation of the veridicality of “body language”. Individual Differences Research, 1, 39-63.

Rhoads, S. A. 2002. Using body language as a measurement of the personality trait of desire for control. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 63, 2996

The Tarot as Ancient Personality Theory

Sigmund Freud has been credited for establishing personality theory in the early 1900’s, the age of modernity where rationalism and a scientific approach was the prevailing mode of thought throughout the western world. Perhaps, though, there have been other times in history when educated minds have considered personality types, traits and origins. Although the middle ages had erased much of accumulated civilized knowledge, at least one source has survived: the tarot deck.

It is believed that tarot cards date beyond ancient Egypt (Sadhu, 1962). When the Egyptians were in danger of being conquered by the Persian Empire, they wanted to insure their accumulated wisdom would be preserved. Stories within the bible itself contain references directly identifiable to tarot cards, such as The Tower, Strength, and Judgement. This paper will focus on the sixteen court cards, the Knight, Queen, Prince and Princess (or in other decks the King, Queen, Knight and Page) of each of the four suits – Wands/Batons, Cups, Swords and Disks/Pentacles/Coins. In readings, the court cards usually represent people – spouses, relatives, friends and other important figures in our lives (Cavendish, 1975).

The suit of the court cards as well as the member role form the two dimensions of the calculated personality. Interestingly, both represent one of the four elemental forces manifesting the personality and so two elements are combined, identifiable by certain traits symbolized in the element. The suits actually represent the piece of human technology associated with mastery over the particular element; so the wand represents mastery over fire in the form of a torch, a cup can hold the element of water, and so on. Similarly with role, Knight represents fire, Queen water, Prince air and Princess earth (I will stick to the Aleister Crowley definitions for simplicity, but it is worthwhile knowing that the suits and court cards vary between deck types (Crowley, 1944)).

Each element symbolizes a particular theme, an umbrella under which rest many related traits, further refined by the crossing of it with another element. Fire brings with it masculine ideas of aggression, industriousness, persuit with passion. Water is associated with feminine qualities of emotion, sensitivity, love and pleasure. The idea of air is linked to conflict, intellect, instability and ethereality. Earth is solid and tangible, related to tangible practical matters, deliberate and present. With these general ideas in mind we can project 16 different personality categories containing unique characteristics, and compare them with traits in the five factor model of personality. Refer to Table 1 for each court card, it’s list of associated personality characteristics and which ‘Big 5’ trait each characteristic is associated with. Court card characteristics were compiled from tarot guides by Crowley (1944) and Cavendish (1975).

Not every characteristic translated over into a five factor trait, and all categorizations are not absolute. I did not attribute characteristics that were overly ambiguous such as ‘discrete’ or ‘thoughtful’ since they could equally belong to more than one category. Other characteristics, such as ‘subtle’ did not seem to fit in to any category. Still others do not seem to be characteristics in the psychological sense, but perhaps may be telling of a particular way that personality theory may be lacking: in terms of the physical, kinesthetic movements. Specifically, the Knight of Disks is described as ‘slow’ and ‘clumsy’, the Prince of Wands as ‘swift’, the Princess of Wands is ‘quick’, Princess of Cups ‘gentle’, the Princess of Swords ‘subtle’ and ‘acute’. The Knight of Cups and Princess of Swords are both described as ‘graceful’. It would be interesting for future research to examine the possibility of relationships between personality types and body language. If common body language characteristics could be found in people with particular personality traits, this could add to better understanding of personality as well as lead to more accurate trait assessments.

There was also an interesting deviation between Crowley and Cavendish’s description of the Princess of Disks. While Cavendish provided a list of characteristics in similar fashion to the other cards, Crowley went on to describe the personality of this card as “too various to enumerate. She contains all the characteristics of woman, and it would depend entirely upon the influences to which she is subjected whether one or another becomes manifest…In one sense, then, her general reputation will be one of bewildering inconsistency” (1944). Does this mean her personality is continuously changing? It would be interesting to pursue the potential meaning of this statement within the context of personality theory, since it is the common belief at this time that personalities are stable and only subject to small change over long periods of time.

Lastly, coding the characteristics was imperfect at best. Some seeming contradictions, such as having High and Low Conscientiousness traits present in the Knight of Disks could represent an error of interpretation, or perhaps just like in people taking personality traits today sometimes people have opposing characteristics. Perhaps though, it could also indicate a flaw in the current personality trait theory. Further examination could be done to comparing completed pictures of the 16 court personality types and compare them to current data. Is it possible that these 16 cards represent the most common combination of personality traits?

References

Cavendish, R. 1975. The Tarot. Westerham Press, Ltd.

Crowley, A. 1944. The Book of Thoth. U. S. Game Systems, Inc.

Sadhu, M. 1962. Tarot: A Contemporary Course of the Quintessence of Hermetic Occultism. Wilshire Book Co.