The capacity to continually exert self control appears to become temporarily depleted over time, leading to mental fatigueand self-control failures. Some researchers have proposed that self control requires limited resources which must beperiodically replenished, but no direct evidence supports this theory. An alternative explanation is that mental fatigue isan evolutionarily-adaptive feature for managing motivations, serving to temporarily disincentivize the present course (ortype) of action, thereby redirecting behavior towards other goals that may better serve an individuals evolutionary fitness.Since self control is typically associated with delayed gratification and self-control failures with immediate gratification,mental fatigue may generally encourage immediately-gratifying behavior by temporarily increasing the extent to whichindividuals devalue all future rewards (delay discounting). To test this hypothesis, the present study examines whetherdelay discounting increases for participants who have recently completed a fatiguing task.

This half day tutorial will introduce participants to breath counting, a recent innovation in mindfulness research methodology that offers the first opportunity to collect a relatively direct behavioral measure of mindfulness (Levinson et al., 2014). This tutorial will review the basics of mindfulness practice before providing attendees with the knowledge, skills, and tools required to implement breath counting procedures in their own research. The widespread adoption of this quantitative measure could positively impact the field by offering a more straightforward and transparent methodology that would improve the overall consistency of mindfulness research across studies and between investigators.