The effects of brief ruminating, distracting, and mindfulness interventions on public speaking anxiety

This study examined the efficacy of two interventions to improve self-reported speech anxiety and anxious speech behavior. Fifty-eight speech-anxious students prepared an impromptu speech then participated in one of three interventions before delivering their speech in front of a video camera. The procedure was repeated twice. All three interventions consisted of fourteen statements read on a computer screen at thirty-second intervals. One of the interventions included statements modeled after recent acceptance/mindfulness interventions while another intervention included neutral statements designed to distract participants from thinking about the upcoming speech. The third intervention consisted of statements that are commonly believed to induce ruminating behavior. This intervention was included to examine the validity of the study. The mindfulness intervention was expected to reduce self-reported anxiety and coded anxious behavior more efficiently due to assumed enhanced attention to private stimuli and subsequent exposure, while the ruminating intervention was predicted to increase self-reported anxious responding as well as in coded behavior during the speeches.;Results demonstrated that self-reported anxiety differentiated the three groups significantly; with those in the mindfulness-induced intervention reporting significantly reduced anxious responding across the two speeches from baseline. Self-reported anxious responding did not change from baseline across speech one and two for participants who received a distraction intervention, while students who received a ruminating intervention reported significantly greater anxious responding from baseline across speech one and two than the other two groups. Coded observed anxious behavior during the two speeches did not yield significant results perhaps due to low rates of observed anxious behavior. The efficacy of a mindfulness intervention is discussed as well as possible underlying mechanisms.