Fig 1.
CONSORT flow diagram of the study.
Table 1.
Sociodemographic characteristics of the sample and baseline comparisons of scales between groups.
Fig 2.
Interoceptive measures before and after training.
A) Box-plots before and after intervention with measures of Interoceptive Accuracy (IAc) Index. Wilcoxon-signed rank test showed no significant intragroup difference for the Mindfulness group or the Control group. There was no between-group difference when comparing change scores (Post-Pre). B) Box-plots of Interoceptive Sensibility (Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness [MAIA] score) before and after intervention with values from all participants with connected dots. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test shows a significant within-group difference in interoceptive sensibility for the mindfulness group whereas there is no significant difference for the control group. C) Group comparison of scatterplots for interoception accuracy versus sensibility. These constructs were not correlated when analyzed separately by group and considering the scores of both groups together (D).
Fig 3.
Box plots before and after intervention with change values of the attention regulation domain from the MAIA scale.
The Mann-Whitney test showed a significant between-group difference for the attentional regulation domain, with an effect size from medium to high (r = 0.64).
Fig 4.
Total Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (MAIA) domains score segmented by group and session.
Lines represent the Mindfulness group (orange) and the Control group (green) before and after intervention with all MAIA subdomains. In 5 out of 8 MAIA domains, a significant increase was found in the Mindfulness but not in the Control group, as assessed by the Wilcoxon-signed rank test.
Table 2.
Within and between groups comparisons for the control and mindfulness groups.
Bold values denote statistical significance.
Fig 5.
Diagram representing the mediation model in which MAIA change scores were found to mediate mindfulness-induced decreases in anxiety state scores (proportion mediated = 0.558). Unstandardized coefficients are depicted in each respective pathway on the graph. Insert plots are shown with the change in MAIA and Anxiety State scores after mindfulness training. a-path: effect of mindfulness training over interoceptive sensibility, b-path: effect of interoceptive sensibility over anxiety state, c-path: total uncontrolled effect of mindfulness training over anxiety state, c’-path: an indirect effect of mindfulness training over anxiety state after controlling for interoceptive sensibility. STAI-S: State and Trait Anxiety Inventory-State domain.