THE RESEARCH BEHIND HUMAN CHANGE
HUMAN CHANGE DRAWS FROM RESEARCHED PROCESSES
Human Change is an individually prepared, experiential approach to personal change.
Human Change can be applied to patterns arising across professional performance, behavior, relationships, family life and personal change.
The particular situation and the change a person wants to create will differ from person to person.
Through active participation, the person is also learning about their own internal responses and developing practical Human Change skills through experience.
The evidence-informed principle remains the same: research informs the processes I draw from, while the individual person and pattern inform how I structure the work.
The individual processes I draw from are informed by established research in areas such as attention, learning, memory, mental imagery, behavioural rehearsal, body awareness and regulated breathing.
These processes are not used as a standard sequence or fixed set of techniques.
I select and structure the processes I consider appropriate according to the information you provide in your detailed pre-session questionnaire, the pattern you want to change, how you experience that pattern and the change you want to create.
RESEARCH BEHIND THE PROCESSES
FOCUSED ATTENTION & ATTENTION SHIFTING
FOCUSED ATTENTION & ATTENTION SHIFTING
FOCUSED ATTENTION & ATTENTION SHIFTING
Attention influences what we notice, what we focus on and how information and experience are processed.
Research into attention and emotion regulation has examined how directing and shifting attention can influence our responses to experience.
Research: Webb, Miles & Sheeran (2012), Psychological Bulletin.
MENTAL SIMULATION & FUTURE REHEARSAL
FOCUSED ATTENTION & ATTENTION SHIFTING
FOCUSED ATTENTION & ATTENTION SHIFTING
Mentally experiencing or rehearsing a future situation can influence what we subsequently do.
A systematic review and meta-analysis examining 123 effect sizes involving 5,685 participants found a reliable positive effect of mental simulation on subsequent behavior.
Research: Cole et al. (2021), Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
BODY AWARENESS & INTEROCEPTION
FOCUSED ATTENTION & ATTENTION SHIFTING
BODY AWARENESS & INTEROCEPTION
Interoception is our perception and awareness of signals arising from within the body.
It is an established area of psychological and neuroscience research, with research examining relationships between internal bodily awareness, emotion and self-regulation.
Research: Heim et al. (2023), Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
MENTAL IMAGERY
PERSPECTIVE & PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE
BODY AWARENESS & INTEROCEPTION
Mental imagery is more than simply “thinking about” something.
Research shows that mental imagery can influence behaviour, emotional responses, intentions, perceived control and physiological responses.
Research: Conroy & Hagger (2018), Health Psychology.
PERSPECTIVE & PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE
PERSPECTIVE & PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE
PERSPECTIVE & PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE
The way an experience is represented internally can influence how it is experienced.
Research shows that changing perspective or psychological distance can alter emotional intensity.
A meta-analysis examining 230 psychological-distance effects found that greater psychological distance reduced emotional intensity overall.
Research: Moran & Eyal (2022), Personality and Social Psychology Review.Have you opened a new location, redesigned your shop, or added a new product or service? Don't keep it to yourself, let folks know.
SLOW & REGULATED BREATHING
PERSPECTIVE & PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE
PERSPECTIVE & PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTANCE
The way we breathe can influence physiological state.
Research into slow-paced breathing has demonstrated effects on cardiovascular and autonomic functioning, including heart-rate variability, heart rate and blood pressure, as well as psychological outcomes.
Research: Shao, Man & Lee (2024), Mindfulness.
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH-INFORMED PROCESSES I MAY DRAW FROM
DIAPHRAGMATIC BREATHING
WORKING-MEMORY & DUAL-TASK PROCESSES
EYE MOVEMENTS DURING MENTAL RECALL
Diaphragmatic breathing has been investigated across numerous randomized controlled trials examining physiological and psychological outcomes.
A recent systematic review identified 48 randomized controlled trials, while also noting differences in study methods and breathing protocols.
Research: Kwon, Won & Lee (2026), Complementary Therapies in Medicine.
EYE MOVEMENTS DURING MENTAL RECALL
WORKING-MEMORY & DUAL-TASK PROCESSES
EYE MOVEMENTS DURING MENTAL RECALL
Research has examined what happens when a person holds remembered or imagined material in mind while simultaneously performing eye movements.
Experimental research has found that this can reduce the vividness of remembered material and, under some conditions, its emotional intensity.
Research: Lee & Cuijpers (2013), Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
WORKING-MEMORY & DUAL-TASK PROCESSES
WORKING-MEMORY & DUAL-TASK PROCESSES
WORKING-MEMORY & DUAL-TASK PROCESSES
Working memory has a limited capacity.
Research supports the principle that holding imagery or remembered material in mind while simultaneously performing another task can affect how that material is subsequently experienced.
Eye movements during mental recall are one well-studied example of this principle.
Research: Lee & Cuijpers (2013), Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry.
FROM RESEARCH TO YOUR INDIVIDUAL SESSION
Research informs the processes I draw from. Your individual pattern informs how I use them.
Before we meet, you complete a detailed questionnaire about the pattern you want to change, how you experience it, when it tends to occur and what you would like to be able to do differently.
I review your answers before your appointment.
I then select and structure the processes I consider appropriate for you and prepare your individual Human Change session.
This means two people may come to me wanting to change something that sounds similar on the surface and have differently structured sessions.
Your detailed questionnaire forms the foundation of this preparation.
Your questionnaire helps inform where we begin, what we work with and which processes I draw upon during your session.
As you participate in the process, you are not only working on the change you came for. You are also developing greater awareness of your own internal experience and learning Human Change skills through experience.
THE GAP BETWEEN KNOWING AND DOING
Knowing how you want to respond does not always mean that response will happen when the real situation occurs.
The relationship between intention and action has been extensively studied within behavioral science.
Research into mental simulation, behavioral rehearsal and implementation intentions has examined ways of strengthening the connection between what a person intends to do and what they subsequently do when the relevant situation occurs.
FUTURE BEHAVIORAL REHEARSAL
Research shows that mentally simulating and rehearsing future actions can influence subsequent behavior.
Research: Cole et al. (2021), Psychonomic Bulletin & Review.
FUTURE-RESPONSE PLANNING
Research into implementation intentions shows that connecting an anticipated situation with an intended response can increase the likelihood of following through on a goal.
Research: Toli, Webb & Hardy (2016), British Journal of Clinical Psychology.
This is one reason Human Change works with more than intellectual understanding of a pattern.
The work can involve actively engaging with internal experience and creating opportunities to experience, practise and mentally rehearse different responses.
WHAT DOES EVIDENCE-INFORMED MEAN?
There is an important distinction between research supporting the individual processes I draw from and research evaluating Human Change as a complete approach.
Many of the individual processes used within Human Change have established research behind them.
Human Change is my individually prepared approach to drawing from research-informed processes according to the person, their particular pattern and the change they want to create.
Human Change as a complete approach has not itself been subjected to controlled trials.
For this reason, I describe my work as evidence-informed, rather than describing Human Change as a scientifically proven approach.
This allows me to draw from established knowledge about human attention, learning, memory, imagery, behavior and physiology while being clear about what research has, and has not, established.
Human Change is an educational and experiential personal-development service. It is not presented as medical or psychological treatment.
SELECTED RESEARCH
Attention & Emotion Regulation
Webb, T. L., Miles, E., & Sheeran, P. (2012). Dealing with feeling: A meta-analysis of the effectiveness of strategies derived from the process model of emotion regulation. Psychological Bulletin, 138(4), 775–808.
Mental Imagery
Conroy, D. E., & Hagger, M. S. (2018). Imagery interventions in health behavior: A meta-analysis. Health Psychology, 37(7), 668–679.
Mental Simulation & Behavioral Rehearsal
Cole, S. N., Smith, D. M., Ragan, K., Suurmond, R., & Armitage, C. J. (2021). Synthesizing the effects of mental simulation on behavior change: Systematic review and multilevel meta-analysis. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 28, 1514–1537.
Perspective & Psychological Distance
Moran, T., & Eyal, T. (2022). Emotion regulation by psychological distance and level of abstraction: Two meta-analyses. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 26(2), 112–159.
Distancing & Internal Representation
Powers, J. P., & LaBar, K. S. (2019). Regulating emotion through distancing: A taxonomy, neurocognitive model, and supporting meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 96, 155–173.
Body Awareness & Interoception
Heim, N., et al. (2023). Psychological interventions for interoception in mental health disorders: A systematic review of randomized-controlled trials. Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences.
Slow-Paced Breathing
Shao, R., Man, I. S. C., & Lee, T. M. C. (2024). The effect of slow-paced breathing on cardiovascular and emotion functions: A meta-analysis and systematic review. Mindfulness.
Diaphragmatic Breathing
Kwon, C. Y., Won, J., & Lee, B. (2026). The health effects of diaphragmatic breathing: A systematic review. Complementary Therapies in Medicine, 96, 103317.
Eye Movements & Emotional Memory
Lee, C. W., & Cuijpers, P. (2013). A meta-analysis of the contribution of eye movements in processing emotional memories. Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, 44(2), 231–239.
Future-Response Planning
Toli, A., Webb, T. L., & Hardy, G. E. (2016). Does forming implementation intentions help people with mental health problems to achieve goals? A meta-analysis of experimental studies with clinical and analogue samples. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 55(1), 69–90.
EVIDENCE-INFORMED HUMAN CHANGE
Research informs the processes I draw from.
Your individual pattern informs how I prepare your session.
Work on something you want to change while learning more about how to work with yourself.
© 2026 Applied Human Change
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