Meditation and Metacontrol

Bernhard Hommel,Lorenza S. Colzato

doi:10.1007/s41465-017-0017-4

Abstract

In addition to longer-term engagement in meditation, the past years have seen an increasing interest in the impact of single bouts of meditation on cognition. In this hypothesis and theory article, we adopt the distinction between focused-attention meditation (FAM) and open-monitoring meditation (OMM) and argue that these different types of meditation have different, to some degree, opposite impact on cognitive processes. We discuss evidence suggesting that single bouts of FAM and OMM are sufficient to bias cognitive control styles towards more versus less top-down control, respectively. We conclude that all meditation techniques are not equal and that successful meditation-based intervention requires the theoretically guided selection of the best-suited technique.

Highlights

While meditation is often viewed and employed as a technique to reduce stress (Chiesa and Seretti 2009), its potential to increase cognitive abilities has been emphasized from its beginnings (e.g., Luk 1994)
Some Buddhist meditation techniques explicitly and intentionally target the training and improvement of concentration and insight, which tap into attentional control and higherorder cognition that according to Lutz et al (2008) are systematically affected and improved by meditation
Engaging in focused-attention meditation (FAM; which typically calls for sustaining selective attention momentby-moment on a specific object with a fairly narrow focus: Lutz et al 2015), open-monitoring meditation (OMM; which typically calls for the attentive monitoring of anything that occurs in experience without focusing on any explicit object), and lovingkindness or compassion meditation has been found to be associated with specific effects on attentional selection, conflict monitoring, and creativity-related tasks (Lippelt et al 2014)

Summary

Introduction

While meditation is often viewed and employed as a technique to reduce stress (Chiesa and Seretti 2009), its potential to increase cognitive abilities has been emphasized from its beginnings (e.g., Luk 1994). Control adjustments are assumed to be reflected by the observation that effects of stimulus-response compatibility (i.e., leakages of attention that lead to response conflict) are reduced or even absent after incompatible trials (Gratton et al 1992) This reduction has been attributed to increased focusing on the task goal (Botvinick et al 2001), which implies that focusing on this goal is more effectively promoted by FAM than it is by OMM. We suggest that, possible long-term effects notwithstanding, engaging in FAM and OMM induces particular metacontrol states, that is, states that moderate the way that individuals exert cognitive control on lower-level processes To motivate this suggestion, we will first introduce the concept of a metacontrol state and apply this concept to meditation

Cognitive Control

Open Questions