Meditation focused on self-observation of the body impairs metacognitive efficiency

Schmidt, Carlo; Reyes, Gabriel; Barrientos, Mónica; Langer, Álvaro I.; Sackur, Jérôme

doi:10.1016/j.concog.2019.03.001

Cited by 16 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 65 publications

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“…We observed an improvement in self-perceived MF skills in our experimental group after the MBI, which also corroborates previous reports (Ramler et al, 2015 ; Schmidt et al, 2019 ). According to the post hoc DA for MF skills, Observe subscale and Non-reactivity subscale were most significant for group separation.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

“…Our experimental group underwent a 30-minute BSM exercise, while the active control group listened to a story for the same length of time. Recent findings have shown divergent results concerning BSM’s effects and efficiency (Dambrun et al, 2019 ; Schmidt et al, 2019 ; Upton & Renshaw, 2018 ), so we were interested in investigating this topic more thoroughly.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This may be related to the choice of BSM for our MBI. In their study, Schmidt et al ( 2019 ) showed that self-observation of the body (SoB) training had a negative impact on metacognitive efficiency; they explained that finding by hypothesizing that SoB participants developed the ability to focus their attention away from their own thoughts.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Short mindfulness-based intervention for psychological and academic outcomes among university students

Vorontsova-Wenger

Ghisletta

Абабков

et al. 2021

Anxiety, Stress, & Coping

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This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a short mindfulness intervention on anxiety, stress and depression symptoms, as well as on inhibition of dominant responses and academic performance among university students. Fifty volunteers (M(age) = 23.8; SD = 5.3) with high levels of depression, anxiety or stress were randomly allocated to a mindfulness practice group or an active control group (listening to stories). Students who underwent the mindfulness practice had decreased levels of anxiety, stress and depression compared to the control group. The mindfulness program also had a beneficial impact on the students’ academic performance. There was no change in the ability to inhibit dominant responses to neutral stimuli (letters); however, we observed a change in responses to neutral faces. Further research perspectives and the clinical implications of the study are discussed.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 93%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Short mindfulness-based intervention for psychological and academic outcomes among university students

Vorontsova-Wenger

Ghisletta

Абабков

et al. 2021

Anxiety, Stress, & Coping

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“…While enhanced sustained attention and working memory performance have also been repeatedly reported after mindfulnessbased meditation training (Chambers et al, 2008;Jha et al, 2010;Mrazek et al, 2013;Zeidan et al, 2010; but see Anderson et al, 2007;MacCoon et al, 2014), other executive functions such as inhibition spark more inconsistent results (Gallant, 2016;Heeren et al, 2009;Sahdra et al, 2011). The same holds for the higher-level cognitive ability to access and evaluate one's own mental contents and decisions, namely metacognition, where some findings suggest improved functioning after focused attention trainings (Baird et al, 2014) while others show no or even reduced efficiency after practices that focused on external body cues (Schmidt et al, 2019). Similarly, whether and to what degree lower-level processes such as perceptual sensitivity, alerting, and orienting of attention are susceptible to meditation-based interventions is still a matter of debate (MacCoon et al, 2014;MacLean et al, 2010;Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007;Tang et al, 2015;Trautwein et al, 2020).…”

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confidence: 96%

Longitudinal evidence for differential plasticity of cognitive functions: Mindfulness-based mental training enhances working memory, but not perceptual discrimination, response inhibition, and metacognition.

Böckler¹,

Singer²

2022

Journal of Experimental Psychology: General

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Recent decades have witnessed an increasing interest in effects of meditation-based interventions on the improvement of cognitive abilities, ranging from perceptual discrimination to metacognition. However, intervention studies face numerous conceptual and methodological challenges, and results are fairly inconsistent. In a large-scale 9-month mental training study, we investigated differential changes in different facets of cognitive functioning after training of three distinct types of mental training modules focusing on attention, socioemotional, and sociocognitive skills. We found enhanced working memory performance specifically after the mindfulness-based attention module, an effect that was positively related to training intensity, but not paralleled by reduced effects of encoding time, memory load, or proactive interference. By contrast, none of the training modules altered perceptual threshold, response inhibition, or metacognition. These findings provide benchmarks for effect-sizes in training-induced change and specify the most promising practice type as well as the underlying processes for improvements in working memory performance.

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“…Awareness was characterized by items specific to one's mental processes, aligning with private cognitive spaces. Previous research on the effect of body focused meditation showed that this meditation practice can impair metacognitive efficiency (Schmidt et al, 2019). Using a two-factor structure of Acting with Awareness separating thought from action awareness might provide further insight into the relationship of mindfulness, body-awareness, and meta-cognition.…”

Section: Implications For the Modelling Of The Ffmqmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dispositional Mindfulness in Context: Cultural and Individual Perspectives

Karl¹

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Mindfulness, which was derived from Buddhist philosophy and practice, is often defined as “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally“. The practice of secular mindfulness exercises has received substantial interest in psychology over the last decade and mindfulness-based practices are now widely implemented in clinical interventions. Previous research has identified stable individual differences in mindfulness which are present even in non-practitioners. My research builds on this body of work and explores (i) the current state and directions in the literature on trait mindfulness research; (ii) the relationship between trait mindfulness and established individual differences such as personality and reinforcement sensitivity; and (iii) the cross-cultural applicability of current mindfulness measures. In the first study in this thesis, I used recent developments in bibliometric analysis to examine the development of the field of trait mindfulness, identifying important research areas in this line of work and patterns of cross-national collaboration. I found 1229 documents in the time span from 2005 to 2021 using a search in the Web of Science. Examining the complete corpus of literature that referenced trait mindfulness, I found that current research approaches focus more on clinically relevant outcomes than on potential predictors of mindfulness, which manifested in substantial clusters of themes around well-being and treatment. I also found substantively more articles published by authors working in Western countries than in the majority world. This indicates that research appears to be biased both towards clinical outcomes of mindfulness and skewed towards Western cultural contexts and concerns. In my next study, I examined the replicability of the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) to explore whether the same five major dimensions of mindfulness emerge in a different sample 15 years later. The FFMQ contains five facets: Non-Judging (non-evaluation of thoughts and feelings), Non-Reacting (ability to not act on negative thoughts and emotions), Acting with Awareness (awareness of self in the moment), Describing (labelling and expressing experiences), and Observing (awareness of sensory experiences). Following the overall protocol of the original study and using a range of currently available mindfulness measures, I found that the facets of the FFMQ could largely be retrieved in this conceptual replication. In addition, new measures of “Western” mindfulness were empirically separable from measures based in Buddhist conceptualizations. This supports the use of multi-facetted mindfulness measures to capture self-reported mindfulness. In the second part of my thesis, I focused on potential individual-level predictors of the facets of mindfulness. In Study 3, I joined two previously separated lines of research by jointly examining the relationship between mindfulness, reinforcement sensitivity, and personality. In contrast to previous studies, I found that the facets of mindfulness might be differentially related to supposed biological (reinforcement sensitivity) and cognitive (personality) individual differences while accounting for their overlap. Specifically, Neuroticism, which in past studies was related to Non-Judging and Non-Reacting, was only related to Non-Reacting. In turn, Non-Judging was predicted by behavioral inhibition, but Non-Reacting was not. In Study 4, I moved from cross-sectional analyses to a 4-month longitudinal investigation, using recent advances in modelling to separate within and between-individual relationships. In contrast to the cross-sectional investigation, I found a more complex pattern of relationships, including potential feedback loops between individual differences and mindfulness. Specifically, I found that the expression of supposed biological differences in long-term orientation predicted individuals’ level of awareness, but in turn higher awareness also predicted greater long-term orientation. This provides a tentative mechanistic explanation of the link between Acting with Awareness and health-behaviors identified in previous studies. In the third part of the thesis, I focus on the applicability of mindfulness measures across cultures. As indicated above, mindfulness emerged in Eastern contexts but is currently studied in Western societies. Hence, I test how well the FFMQ as the gold standard of mindfulness trait measures performs across cultures. To provide a toolkit for cross-cultural researchers, I present a synthesis of standards for cross-cultural comparisons and developed a proto-type of an R-package that implements various methodological advances and analytical tools. In the final study, I applied these tools to examine the suitability of the FFMQ for cross-cultural comparisons across 16 countries. Overall, I found that the FFMQ is substantially biased towards higher income and more individualistic contexts and shows substantial variation across cultures. This finding implies that the FFMQ might not be suitable in its current form for cross-cultural comparisons, possible due to cultural differences in the understanding of Acting with Awareness, which in an exploratory study is separated into awareness of mind and body. This indicates that additional research is necessary to ensure the cross-cultural comparability of mindfulness and to advance research. In my general discussion, I explore both methodological and conceptual avenues for future research in trait mindfulness. Returning to questions of individual differences in mindfulness, I highlight how recent advances in network modelling might allow researchers to untangle the differences in between and within-individual relationships observed in this thesis. I present some evidence of the application of network models from research on personality, to highlight the usefulness of this technique for future research on mindfulness. Focusing on cultural differences in structure and functionality, I review various lines of research that indicate that mindfulness-like features may be found in various cultural contexts, but may be differently experienced and expressed, as indicated by my psychometric examination of the FFMQ. I outline how researchers taking a functionalist approach might link current mindfulness approaches with different philosophical and cultural approaches to enrich the nomological network and present initial evidence on these relationships.

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Meditation focused on self-observation of the body impairs metacognitive efficiency

Cited by 16 publications

References 65 publications

Short mindfulness-based intervention for psychological and academic outcomes among university students

Short mindfulness-based intervention for psychological and academic outcomes among university students

Longitudinal evidence for differential plasticity of cognitive functions: Mindfulness-based mental training enhances working memory, but not perceptual discrimination, response inhibition, and metacognition.

Dispositional Mindfulness in Context: Cultural and Individual Perspectives

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