Toward a Mindful Psychological Science: Theory and Application

Although Langer and her colleagues have focused primarily on adult development and aging, there are similarly many intriguing open empirical questions about the nature of mindfulness at the other end of ontogenesis, namely, in child and adolescent development. For example, open empirical questions include: Are there systematic differences in the prevalence of mindful/mindless functioning over the course of child and adolescent development? Are the potential sources of debilitation in childhood and/or adolescence similar or dissimilar to those uncovered in aging? What are the ways to promote mindful functioning over the course of child and adolescent development? These and related questions have the potential to occupy developmental psychologists for some time to come.

Relations to Other Subfields

In much the same way as other grand theorists (e.g., Piaget, Werner, Vygotsky), Langer appears intentionally to have kept her concepts general and conditional so that others would feel free to specify the details in their particular areas of investigation. Thus, additional subfields of psychology, both basic and applied, for which mindfulness theory has significant applicability include, but by no means are limited to, the following.

Cognitive Psychology

Steinberg (this issue) has addressed the question of how mindfulness might best be understood. Although he has considered three distinct possibilities, namely, mindfulness as a cognitive ability, a personality trait, or a cognitive style, he has concluded that mindfulness has characteristics of all three, but appears closest to a cognitive style. Specifically, he has reasoned that, similar to other cognitive styles, mindfulness appears (a) to interface the areas of cognition and personality, (b) to lend itself to typical or maximum performance measurement, (c) to have characteristics of both a state and a trait, and (d) arguably to be value-free (i.e., mindfulness is not always superior to mindlessness). From my vantage point as a cognitive style researcher (e.g., Demick, 1991; Demick & Harkins, 1999), future research appears warranted, in particular, on the construct validity of mindfulness/mindlessness and on the contexts under which mindfulness versus mindlessness is most adaptive. For example, toward add ressing the former, research within my own laboratory (Demick & Thayer, 2000) has been assessing, through factor-analytic studies, the relations among field dependence-independence cognitive styles (Witkin et al., 1954), thinking styles (Sternberg, 1997), learning styles (Kolb, 1978), teaching styles (Henson & Borthwick, 1984), and mindfulness/mindlessness (Langer, 1999). The latter problem is particularly important, since many cognitive styles (e.g., field dependence-independence) have long been plagued with the criticism (e.g., Zigler, 1963) that they merely reflect cognitive ability and, hence, are not value-free. Thus, insights might be gleaned from previous research that has addressed the adaptive nature of repression (mindlessness) under such specific conditions as school (e.g., Bybee, Kramer, & Zigler, 1997) and impending surgery (e.g., Santostefano, 1978). Could it be demonstrated that Langer's construct is nonoverlapping with other cognitive styles as well as differentially adaptive in different cont exts, many of the problems traditionally associated with cognitive style research might be overcome and new life breathed into this important research area.