Background and objectives
People with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may experience heightened stress reactivity. Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is an evidence-based treatment involving eye movements while retrieving memories. We evaluated if EMD participants had less stress reactivity than retrieval-only participants after personal trauma scripts. We also investigated changes in daily cortisol levels related to treatment outcomes.
Methodology
PTSD participants (N = 91) were randomly assigned to EMD (N = 47) or retrieval-only conditions (N = 44). Baseline and post-treatment data were collected and measured using Heart rate variability (HRV), heart rate (HR), pre-ejection period (PEP), and cortisol levels (AUC; the area under the curve, and CAR; the cortisol awakening response). We conducted a linear mixed model to analyze the main outcomes.
Results
No difference between EMD and retrieval-only in the reduction of stress reactivity and acceleration of recovery over time. Both groups showed that HR and PEP reactivity to the trauma script decreased significantly after treatment. In contrast, only EMD group experienced an acceleration of HR recovery in response to trauma scripts following treatment. Cortisol measures showed an inconsistent pattern, with a higher CAR in retrieval-only after treatment compared to EMD. However, no significant difference was found between groups in terms of AUC levels after treatment.
Limitation
The precision of measuring and analyzing saliva samples is highly dependent on the participant’s adherence to the schedule.
Conclusion
No specific benefits for eye movements was found in the current study. Both EMDR and retrieval-only can reduce stress reactivity in treating PTSD.
Clinical Trial Registration
[www.ClinicalTrials.gov], identifier [ISRCTN55239132].

Growth mindset, the belief that personal attributes such as intelligence are malleable, has previously been related to more effort investment. Here, we investigated how undergraduates’ mindset (N = 114) relates to the choice to invest effort during an arithmetic task, indexed by whether they make low vs. high effort-related choices. Social cognitive theory suggests that past performance experiences (mastery vs. failure) and physiological state are important sources for competence self-evaluations. Therefore, in addition to mindset, we also investigated how effort-related choices are influenced more dynamically, by failures and physiological responses during the task. Growth mindset and physiological effort mobilization did not predict effort-related choices but making mistakes did predict lower effort choices in the subsequent round. This study further supports the importance of mastery experiences for effort investment and provides a novel approach for integrating different levels of influence on effort-related choices during an educationally-relevant task.

Experiencing school burnout symptoms can have negative consequences for learning. A growth mindset, the belief that human qualities such as intelligence are malleable, has previously been correlated with fewer school burnout symptoms in late adolescents. This might be because adolescents with a stronger growth mindset show more adaptive self-regulation strategies and thereby increasing resilience against academic setbacks. Here we confirmed in a sample of 426 Dutch young adolescents (11–14 years old; 48% female) that this relationship between growth mindset and school burnout symptoms holds after controlling for other potential predictors of school burnout symptoms such as academic achievement, school track, gender, and socio-economic status. Our second aim was to increase our understanding of the mechanism underlying the relation between mindset and school burnout, by measuring physiological resilience (vagal activity, a measure of parasympathetic activity, also known as heart rate variability or HRV) in a subsample (n = 50). We did not find any relation between vagal activity and growth mindset or school burnout symptoms, nor could we establish a mediating effect of vagal activity in their relation. In conclusion, we found evidence for a potential protective effect of a growth mindset on school burnout symptoms in young adolescents, but not for physiological resilience (vagal activity) as an underlying mechanism. The protective effect of growth mindset as confirmed in our younger sample can be leveraged in interventions to prevent increasing school burnout symptoms.