Commentary: Does Mindfulness Enhance Critical Thinking? Evidence for the Mediating Effects of Executive Functioning in the Relationship between Mindfulness and Critical Thinking

Abstract

tHe roCKy PatH oF SImPlIFyInG ContrIBUtIonS By InteGratIonDoes mindfulness (M) enhance critical thinking (CT)? Asks the target article (TA) and dives into physical science's methodology for systematic observation, its binary process of if-then hypothesis testing aimed at confirming or rejecting the null hypothesis that M enhances CT, and its cause-effect offspring variously known as factual, declarative, or "knowthat" knowledge. This commentary illustrates, with the apt example of the TA, why the methodology does not apply, as readily as it is commonly employed, to life sciences like education and psychology. Binary if-then questions are, as a set, an indispensable tool for simplifying complexity by isolating sources of contribution to make those sources more observable, a tool less rewarding for the unobservable biofunctional systems that populate life sciences. To solve their systematic observation problems, biofunctional life scientists must embrace the rocky path of getting well acquainted with another set of questions and learn to use it corequisitely with the first, and we may be quick to add, both conceptually and biofunctionally (Iran-Nejad and Irannejad, 2017). The second question set contrasts dramatically with the first in that it simplifies complexity in science by integration of multiple diverse sources-a process we use here synonymously with understanding. Specifically, the second set of questions has to do with the all too familiar "how, " mainly, but also "why" and similar forms of question.It is straightforward to show how the two sets of questions and their answers can be corequisites and as such a challenge to the TA. Consider the declarative conceptual understanding statement, CU1 I know that I am mindful to think critically. CU1 is an almost contributor-to-contributor match to the subtitle of the TA in three sources of contribution, namely, the active "I" or the executive function (EF), M, and CT. However, CU1, but not the subtitle, presupposes a fourth source of

The Central Executive Mediates the Relationship Between Children’s Approximate Number System Acuity and Arithmetic Strategy Utilization in Computational Estimation

“…Accordingly, future research should pay more attention to children who perform in the tail of the distribution. Second, we “left out critical co-requisite sources of contribution, something that happens all too often in both psychology and education” ( Iran-Nejad and Irannejad, 2017b ). According to active-dynamic theory ( Iran-Nejad, 1990 ; Iran-Nejad and Chissom, 1992 ), CE, as an active source of learning, can influence learning and performance through dynamic self-regulation ( Iran-Nejad and Homaifar, 2005 ).…”

Biofunctional Understanding and Conceptual Control: Searching for Systematic Consensus in Systemic Cohesion

“…Perhaps the non-existent state of the art of the experimental science of biofunctional understanding (ESBU) is ominously symptomatic of something too different altogether to expect from our existing state of the art in the experimental science of knowing that is confined today to the “prison house” of conceptual understanding (ESCU, see, e.g., Prawat, 2000 ; Iran-Nejad and Irannejad, 2017a ). In other words, the sacred run of the mill in ESCU is something to which we have grown too accustomed as a comfort zone, which makes it something too frustrating to question.…”

“…Given this line of reasoning, the newly found direct and immediate wisdom of biofunctional understanding frees embodiment science from the confining prison house of systematic fact-seeking observation ( Iran-Nejad and Irannejad, 2017a ). In this light, subjective data-gathering of the type done in the present study is a methodological asset rather than a subjective liability.…”

“…Further supportive evidence has been reported in a semester-long classroom intervention study in which undergraduate teacher education students were encouraged to seek their own first-person revelations and engage in writing to reflect on them ( Iran-Nejad et al, 2015 ). Therefore, there is hope for new embodiment-science methodology ( Caligiore et al, 2016 ; Iran-Nejad and Irannejad, 2017a , b ), that the physically hard and forbidding black box of the physical body may have now developed access windows for airing its infinite wisdom and for the light of systemic cohesion-sensing to shine through as directed by science-quality sources of systematic consensus.…”

“…The second set, post-requisite to the first, includes thinking, concentration, contemplation, meditation, prediction, foresight, hindsight, elaboration, application, evaluation, observing, listening, looking, and so forth. These processes are the source and operators of conceptual understanding (CU); they represent the key process of understanding fresh realizations further by reflection; they make up the wisdom of the intellectual capacity of knowing on demand; and they are dependent for their operation on the “active I” process—the third and only other source of contribution to the Iran-Nejad wholetheme spiral of biofunctional understanding and critical thinking ( Iran-Nejad, 1978 , 2000 ; Iran-Nejad and Gregg, 2001 ; Iran-Nejad and Irannejad, 2017a , b ). Finally, it is this latter set of processes that links the embodied mind and biofunctional theories supportively and turns into oxymorons the theories of embodied cognition and biofunctional understanding.…”