title: 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.
authors: Institute for Frontier Areas in Psychology and Mental Health Freiburg, Germany.
authors: Marc
authors: M
authors: Wittmann
authors: Institute of Medical Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich Munich, Germany.
authors: Simone
authors: S
authors: Otten
authors: Institute of Medical Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich Munich, Germany.
authors: Eva
authors: E
authors: Schötz
authors: Institute for Frontier Areas in Psychology and Mental Health Freiburg, Germany.
authors: Anna
authors: A
authors: Sarikaya
authors: Institute for Frontier Areas in Psychology and Mental Health Freiburg, Germany.
authors: Hanna
authors: H
authors: Lehnen
authors: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center Freiburg Freiburg, Germany ; Institute for Transcultural Health Studies, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.
authors: Han-Gue
authors: HG
authors: Jo
authors: Division Integrative Health Promotion, University of Applied Sciences Coburg, Germany.
authors: Niko
authors: N
authors: Kohls
authors: Department of Psychosomatic Medicine, University Medical Center Freiburg Freiburg, Germany ; Institute for Transcultural Health Studies, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.
authors: Stefan
authors: S
authors: Schmidt
authors: Institute of Medical Psychology, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich Munich, Germany.
authors: Karin
authors: K
authors: Meissner
keywords: impulsiveness; mindfulness meditation; passage of time; time perception; time perspective
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