Meditators Exercise Better Endogenous and Exogenous Control of Visual Awareness

Abstract

Meditation practice has shown improvements in perception, attention, and cognitive control. Here, we study the extent of endogenous and exogenous control meditators have over their visual awareness, when they view a bi-stable image. In experiment one, we investigate the differences between meditators and controls in terms of endogenous perceptual control, i.e., when they are instructed to speed up or slow down perceptual switches when viewing a Necker cube. In experiment two, we investigate how stimulus context and flankers (exogenous perceptual control) affect dwell times of visual percepts for meditators and non-meditators. Our results show that meditators (in comparison with controls) have longer dwell times in the neutral baseline condition. Meditators are also able to speed up and slow down the dwell times of their percepts more (relative to their baseline) than non-meditators. The dwell time distributions of meditators (mean, variance, and skewness) are also immune to flanker effects while viewing bi-stable images. The results show that meditators have better endogenous (instruction driven) and exogenous (stimulus driven) control compared with non-meditators over the contents and properties of their perceptual experience. The control exhibited by meditators is critical for not only understanding the effects of meditation but points to the need for models of visual perception and cognitive control to incorporate those effects.