title: Meditation-induced states predict attentional control over time.
abstract: Meditation is becoming an increasingly popular topic for scientific research and various effects of extensive meditation practice (ranging from weeks to several years) on cognitive processes have been demonstrated. Here we show that extensive practice may not be necessary to achieve those effects. Healthy adult non-meditators underwent a brief single session of either focused attention meditation (FAM), which is assumed to increase top-down control, or open monitoring meditation (OMM), which is assumed to weaken top-down control, before performing an Attentional Blink (AB) task - which assesses the efficiency of allocating attention over time. The size of the AB was considerably smaller after OMM than after FAM, which suggests that engaging in meditation immediately creates a cognitive-control state that has a specific impact on how people allocate their attention over time.
authors: Leiden University, Cognitive Psychology Unit & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, The Netherlands. Electronic address: colzato@fsw.leidenuniv.nl.
authors: Lorenza S
authors: LS
authors: Colzato
authors: Leiden University, Cognitive Psychology Unit & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors: Roberta
authors: R
authors: Sellaro
authors: Leiden University, Cognitive Psychology Unit & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors: Iliana
authors: I
authors: Samara
authors: University of Amsterdam, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Programme group Work and Organizational Psychology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
authors: Matthijs
authors: M
authors: Baas
authors: Leiden University, Cognitive Psychology Unit & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden, The Netherlands.
authors: Bernhard
authors: B
authors: Hommel
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001288:Attention / Q000502:physiology*; D054518:Attentional Blink / Q000502:physiology*; D056344:Executive Function / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D019122:Meditation; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Attention; Attentional Blink; Focused attention meditation (FAM); Meditation state; Open monitoring meditation (OMM)