A Multilevel Approach to Explore the Wandering Mind and Its Connections with Mindfulness and Personality.

Damiano Cantone,Sabrina Cinot,Cristiano Crescentini,Alessio Matiz,Susanna Feruglio

doi:10.3390/bs11090125

Damiano Cantone, Sabrina Cinot + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/bs11090125

Copy DOI

Abstract

We propose an innovative approach to study Mind Wandering (MW), and we present an application of this methodology to study the effects of a Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training. We assessed individuals’ MW through a free association task and an attentional task with thought-probes combined with a questionnaire for the phenomenological characteristic of each MW episode. We used the Temperament and Character Inventory to assess participants’ personality traits and their associations with measures of MW. Our study was limited by the course of the Covid-19 pandemic and only nine healthy young individuals completed the testing sessions, which were carried out before and after the MOM training. After MOM, participants showed fewer repetitive and self-relevant thoughts and indices of better performance in the attentional task; the linguistic analysis of participants’ free associations showed lower verbal productivity and a decrease in utterances that expressed anxiety/stress. Overall, we foresee that future studies could replicate our preliminary findings with larger samples and in a period without a global health emergency. This multilevel approach to the study of MW may allow researchers to gain a broader view of the phenomenon, considering its occurrence, qualitative characteristics, impact on cognitive tasks, malleability via mindfulness or other psychological interventions, and relations with personality traits.

Highlights

In this article we propose a new multilevel approach to study the impact of Mindfulness Meditation (MM) on the wandering mind of practitioners, which combines a first-person and a third-person perspective on mind wandering (MW)
In the present article we proposed an innovative multilevel approach to study spontaneous thoughts and MW, and we presented a pilot study for a possible application of this methodology to study the effects of a mindfulness-based training course on individuals’
Participants were assessed through a personality test (TCI), a computer attention test (SART) with thought-probes for detecting MW, a questionnaire for the phenomenological characteristic of each MW episode (TCQ), and a free association task

Summary

Introduction

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. The last decades have seen increased research on spontaneous thoughts and mind wandering (MW), along with rising interest in understanding the cognitive and psychological processes involved in mindfulness-based meditation. These two lines of research appeared to have many common elements; the link between MW and Mindfulness Meditation (MM) remains an open question, due to the difficulties in observing and measuring spontaneous thoughts. In this article we propose a new multilevel approach to study the impact of MM on the wandering mind of practitioners, which combines a first-person and a third-person perspective on MW

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion