Cultivating Compassion in Healthcare: One Researcher’s Journey

In the midst of the COVID pandemic, health care is in the news daily. But there’s an often-overlooked element in many hospital systems: the role of chaplains. For patients experiencing loneliness, isolation, fear, and physical pain, chaplains offer much needed emotional support, spiritual guidance, and hope. But could chaplains and the patients they support also …

School-Based Promotion of Children’s Empathy, Kindness, and Altruism: Emerging Research, Lingering Questions, and Future Directions

There is a growing consensus among psychologists, educators, and the public at large that a more comprehensive vision of education is needed—one that includes an explicit focus on “educating the heart” and intentionally cultivates children’s social and emotional competencies and positive human qualities, including self-regulation, self-awareness, empathy, compassion, and altruism. This explicit and intentional focus …

Developmental Contemplative Science: Framework for the Study of Prosocial Development

The aim of this talk is to provide a brief introduction to Developmental Contemplative Science (DCS), a theoretical framework that leverages insights from recent research on brain and behavioral development and examines how contemplative practices can facilitate the emergence of essential human functions such as reflection, agency, well being, and empathy. On this view, development …

Fieldwork on Contemplative Practices with High Risk Preschoolers: Children’s Empathic, Compassionate, and Self-Regulatory Behaviors

The purpose of this pilot study is to examine the effects of a mindfulness intervention on emerging self-regulation and compassion/empathy among low-income preschoolers. The study will be conducted with children enrolled in Project GROW, an Americorps program at UW-Madison that pairs college students with low-income preschoolers over the course of a school year. Project GROW …

The effect of mindfulness training on executive function and social cognition in the developing brain: An EEG study in preschoolers practicing mindfulness

Recent years have seen a proliferation of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) in K-12 educational settings. Scientific inquiry of MBIs in adults suggests beneficial effects on a wide range of cognitive and socio-emotional processes. In line with these findings, MBIs studies in K-12 settings have reported a reduction in behavioral difficulties, psychopathological symptoms, executive function (EF) and …

Teaching mindfulness in schools: A mixed method study of teachers’ mindfulness practice, professional knowledge, perspectives and experiences

The proposed study investigates the role that teacher characteristics play in teachers’ experience delivering a mindfulness-based health and wellness curriculum. Specifically, teachers’ embodiment of mindfulness (through practice) and professional knowledge will be examined to provide insight into factors that may influence their experience and fidelity delivering the curriculum. A maximum variation sample of ten elementary …

The impact of mindfulness training on emotion regulation of primary school children in Vietnamese cultural context: Integrating electrophysiological and first-person assessments

Mindfulness is a form of mental training wherein metacognitive awareness, attention control and an attitude of non-reactivity are cultivated. Applied to managing of emotions, mindfulness can be considered an emotion regulation strategy. Only a few developmental studies explored the direct link between mindfulness and emotion regulation and they were limited to Western cultural context. Additionally, …

Developing and testing the effectiveness of a self-compassion intervention for beginning teachers

The first year of teaching can be extremely challenging. Novice teachers face a wide-range of worries and disappointments, which can sap motivation, and lead to burnout and exiting the profession. The current research seeks to design and evaluate contemplative exercises that curb this “burnout cascade” during the transition into teaching. We propose that a brief …