Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation

Abstract

During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism. Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed. Addressing such concerns, the present article discusses the difficulties of defining mindfulness, delineates the proper scope of research into mindfulness practices, and explicates crucial methodological issues for interpreting results from investigations of mindfulness. For doing so, the authors draw on their diverse areas of expertise to review the present state of mindfulness research, comprehensively summarizing what we do and do not know, while providing a prescriptive agenda for contemplative science, with a particular focus on assessment, mindfulness training, possible adverse effects, and intersection with brain imaging. Our goals are to inform interested scientists, the news media, and the public, to minimize harm, curb poor research practices, and staunch the flow of misinformation about the benefits, costs, and future prospects of mindfulness meditation.

A More Rigorous Examination of the Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Working Memory Capacity

“…The current study investigated if mindfulness meditation could enhance the capacity of the working memory system using recommended rigorous criteria for reaching such a conclusion: using multiple, valid indicators of working memory capacity different from the tasks participants trained on, and demonstrating improvement relative to an active, adaptive control group. This extends previous reports of working memory capacity improvement following mindfulness meditation training by using stringent design criteria that previous studies had not fully incorporated (Banks et al 2015;Jha et al 2010Jha et al , 2017Mrazek et al 2013;Quach et al 2016;Van Dam et al 2017;Zeidan et al 2010). It was hypothesized that the mindfulness meditation group would significantly improve working memory capacity from pretest to posttest, whereas the cognitive training group would not demonstrate such improvement.…”

“…Mindfulness meditation practices can vary along multiple dimensions and qualities, such as object orientation, meta-awareness, dereification, focus of attention, aperture of attentional focus, stability of attention, clarity and vividness of experience, effort to maintain mental state, physical posture during meditation, judgment or elaboration on thoughts, or ethics and purpose of practice (Lutz et al 2015;Wallace 1999). Previous research has been inconsistent with the style of mindfulness meditation practice used and the duration, frequency, and medium of training implementation (Isbel and Summers 2017;Van Dam et al 2017). To better standardize mindfulness treatments and compare results from different studies, Britton et al (2017) How variations of mindfulness meditation, both within an individual meditation session and between different meditation training programs, effect working memory capacity and its component parts, directly and indirectly, remain to be specified.…”

“…While promising, these studies all lacked one or more of the following design criteria: random assignment; comparison to active, adaptive controls; or using multiple, valid measures of working memory capacity. Van Dam et al (2017) highlight issues such as these as consistent shortcomings in the mindfulness meditation literature, specifically, failure to follow up promising results with wellcontrolled studies that rule out alternative explanations (i.e., practice effects, placebo/Hawthorne effects, selection bias).…”

“…These outcome criteria can be used as a test of mindfulness meditation's efficacy, as called for in reviews of the mindfulness meditation literature (Van Dam et al 2017). The previously mentioned mindfulness meditation studies that demonstrated working memory capacity improvement have included some or most of these criteria in their study design, but not all.…”

“…Also of theoretical value, the current design included a consistent style of meditation practice: focused attention mindfulness meditation (Lutz et al 2008). As noted in reviews of the mindfulness meditation literature (Isbel and Summers 2017;Van Dam et al 2017), the specific effects of specific styles of mindfulness meditation over specific durations have not been clearly identified; these specifications are included in the present experiment. It was hypothesized that (H1) the mindfulness meditation group would significantly increase working memory capacity following training, whereas the active, adaptive computerized training group would not improve.…”