Subjective expansion of extended time-spans in experienced meditators

Abstract

Experienced meditators typically report that they experience time slowing down in meditation practice as well as in everyday life. Conceptually this phenomenon may be understood through functional states of mindfulness, i.e., by attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and enhanced memory. However, hardly any systematic empirical work exists regarding the experience of time in meditators. In the current cross-sectional study, we investigated whether 42 experienced mindfulness meditation practitioners (with on average 10 years of experience) showed differences in the experience of time as compared to 42 controls without any meditation experience matched for age, sex, and education. The perception of time was assessed with a battery of psychophysical tasks assessing the accuracy of prospective time judgments in duration discrimination, duration reproduction, and time estimation in the milliseconds to minutes range as well with several psychometric instruments related to subjective time such as the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, the Barratt Impulsivity Scale and the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory. In addition, subjective time judgments on the current passage of time and retrospective time ranges were assessed. While subjective judgements of time were found to be significantly different between the two groups on several scales, no differences in duration estimates in the psychophysical tasks were detected. Regarding subjective time, mindfulness meditators experienced less time pressure, more time dilation, and a general slower passage of time. Moreover, they felt that the last week and the last month passed more slowly. Overall, although no intergroup differences in psychophysical tasks were detected, the reported findings demonstrate a close association between mindfulness meditation and the subjective feeling of the passage of time captured by psychometric instruments.

Mindfulness Promotes a More Balanced Time Perspective: Correlational and Intervention-Based Evidence

“…More specifically, scores on Past Negative were significantly reduced after the MBIs, in line with the negative association of this scale with dispositional mindfulness (see also Muro et al 2017;Seema and Sircova 2013;Wittmann et al 2014). The result is also consistent with findings of lower Past Negative in meditators compared with non-meditators (Droit-Volet and Heros 2017; Wittmann et al 2015b). In a similar vein, reduced scores on Past Positive were observed following the MBIs (cf.…”

Psychophysiology of duration estimation in experienced mindfulness meditators and matched controls

“…We conducted a cross-sectional study comparing n = 22 experienced mindfulness meditators with n = 22 matched controls. The study was conducted at the Institute of Medical Psychology, University of Munich, as part of a larger two-center study, which compared 42 mindfulness meditators with 42 matched controls in their ability of time perception using a broad range of behavioral tasks (Wittmann et al, 2015 ). The study was approved by the ethical committees of the partaking Universities (Munich and Freiburg).…”

Audience entrainment during live contemporary dance performance: physiological and cognitive measures

“…In this sense, studies in aesthetics guided our experimental work for the construction of a post hoc questionnaire. As in studies focusing on meditation—which investigate the relationship between time perception, attention regulation and body awareness in a “static posture” (Sauer et al, 2012 ; Kramer et al, 2013 ; Wittmann et al, 2015 )—Myriam Gourfink’s work is also an interesting way to explore the relationship between time perception and bodily awareness as well as movement (and its perception). In our second experiment we analyzed whether time distortion effects in the spectators were correlated with their subjective reports (engagement, attention to the movement and interoceptive awareness).…”