Individual Differences in the Change of Attentional Functions With Brief One-Time Focused Attention and Open Monitoring Meditations.

Masaru Tanaka,Kentaro Hiromitsu,Hiroshi Imamizu,Ryoichi Nakashima

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.716138

Abstract

Mindfulness meditation is increasingly used for clinical treatment and to improve well-being. One of the most fundamental benefits of mindfulness meditation is now considered as enhanced attentional control. Mindfulness meditation is a complex technique but most of its variants consist of a combination of two types of basic meditation practice: focused attention meditation (FAM) and open monitoring meditation (OMM). Although many studies have examined the effect of relatively long-term meditation on attention, some recent studies have focused on the effect of a brief one-time meditation on cognitive processing, including attentional functions. Furthermore, it is necessary to discuss the relationship between the effect of mindfulness meditation on attentional functions and personality traits (especially traits related to mindfulness). This study investigated whether attentional control is improved by a single 30-min FAM or OMM and whether the degree of improvement in attentional functions – alerting, orienting, and conflict monitoring – induced by the meditation varies according to the participant’s trait scores related to mindfulness measured by the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups, i.e., FAM, OMM, and no-meditation (noM) groups, and given an Attentional Network Test before and after each 30-min meditation session. Compared with the noM group, there was no overall improvement in attentional functions with either type of meditation. However, there were associations between the change of the alerting function’s score and the personality traits: in the FAM group, alerting scores were negatively associated with the nonreactivity facet of the FFMQ, and in the OMM group, alerting scores were positively associated with describing facet scores of the FFMQ. The results indicate that the effects of meditation methods on attentional functions could depend on the individual’s traits related to mindfulness and that mindfulness meditation could sometimes appear to have no impact on attentional functions.

Highlights

Mindfulness meditation, firstly developed by Kabat-Zinn (1990), has been described as a mental training technique that enhances one’s ability to intentionally and non-judgmentally concentrate on the “here and ” (e.g., Ivanovski and Malhi, 2007; Chiesa et al, 2011)
The regression analyses suggest that the degree of the change in alerting in focused attention meditation (FAM) group is negatively associated with higher scores for nonreactivity, and the change in alerting in open monitoring meditation (OMM) group is positively associated with higher scores for describing
Our results show that a brief one-time meditation has no impact on any attentional component assessed by the Attentional Network Test (ANT), and especially the changes in the orienting and conflict monitoring scores are not associated with any personality traits related to mindfulness

Summary

Introduction

Mindfulness meditation, firstly developed by Kabat-Zinn (1990), has been described as a mental training technique that enhances one’s ability to intentionally and non-judgmentally concentrate on the “here and ” (e.g., Ivanovski and Malhi, 2007; Chiesa et al, 2011). The aim of FAM is to establish a persistent metacontrol state with increased top-down selective attention regulation and a narrower attentional focus on the task at hand (Lippelt et al, 2014; Hommel and Colzato, 2017; Immink et al, 2017), which benefits sustaining attention even in the presence of distracters (Hasenkamp et al, 2012; Colzato et al, 2015a). The aim of OMM is to establish a flexible meta-control state with weakened top-down selective attention regulation and a broader attentional focus by accepting various experiences (Lippelt et al, 2014; Colzato et al, 2015a; Hommel and Colzato, 2017), which reduces competition between task-relevant and task-irrelevant information (Immink et al, 2017)

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