Meditation, Cognitive Flexibility and Well-Being

Abstract

A number of previous studies have suggested that mindfulness meditation can enhance cognitive performance. Although both western empirical findings and Buddhist psychological theory have emphasised a role for cognitive flexibility in the development and maintenance of mental health, few studies have specifically focused on flexibility in relation to mindfulness. The present study used a range of objective, behavioural measures to assess cognitive flexibility in 41 individuals before and after a 6-day intensive Vipassana (mindfulness) retreat. Subjective assessments of mindfulness, positive functioning and well-being were also taken. A comparably sized control group of students and government employees was given the same pre-and post-test measures. In contrast to our expectations and to previous reports, there were no significant changes in cognitive performance, over and above practice-related improvements also shown by the control group. Retreat participants did, however, register positive improvements on the subjective measures. We discuss possible limitations with our experimental design and highlight important issues that may assist future studies aiming to assess effects of mindfulness in the cognitive domain.

The Effect of Mindfulness Training on Cognitive Flexibility in Sixth-grade Female Students

“…The results showed that there was a significant difference in post-test scores between the experimental and control groups in the scores related to cognitive flexibility, and considering the higher mean scores of the cognitive flexibility of the experimental group in the post-test, it can be stated that mindfulness training was effective in increasing students' cognitive flexibility. The results were in line with similar studies conducted Abdi et al (2016), (Kurmi et al, 2015), Pour Mohammadi and Bagheri (2015), Li et al (2018), Hartkamp and Thornton (2017), Murphy-Beiner and Soar (2020), and (Yadav, 2019).…”

“…Their research showed that eight sessions of mindfulness training improved people's scores on preventive and reactive cognitive control. In their study, Hartkamp and Thornton (2017) also examined meditation, cognitive flexibility, and psychological well-being. The repetition of the results did not indicate a significant change in the cognitive function of the experimental group compared to the control group in the posttest stage.…”

Stable individual differences in strategies within, but not between, visual search tasks

“…However, a sub-set of participants, termed 'super-foragers', were able to change between search target categories with very little cost to performance. While test-retest reliability has not been measured explicitly for the foraging paradigm, the task was used as a measure to assess the effect of a six day mindfulness retreat on cognitive performance (Hartkamp & Thornton, 2017). From a re-analysis of these data, we can estimate that the test-retest reliability for the mean run length is r ≈ 0.7 for the feature condition and r ≈ 0.88 for the conjunction search.…”

Just Open Your Mind? A Randomized, Controlled Study on the Effects of Meditation on Creativity

“…Nevertheless, such participants seem to be generally more responsible and conscientious, which can be helpful in such studies with interventions. There are alternatives, for example -recruitment through meditation and yoga centers (as in Müller et al, 2016;Hartkamp and Thornton, 2017). However, this approach shares similar flaws, since such samples do not represent general population as well.…”

“…In the case of creative thinking, metacognitive regulation of attention allows broad attentional focus when necessary is of most importance (Runco, 2004). Some reviews, however, deem the results of studies exploring the link between meditation and attention inconclusively (Lao et al, 2016;Hartkamp and Thornton, 2017).…”