Psychophysiology of duration estimation in experienced mindfulness meditators and matched controls.

Simone Otten,Marc Wittmann,Stefan Schmidt,Niko Kohls,Eva Schötz,Karin Meissner

doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01215

Abstract

Recent research suggests that bodily signals and interoception are strongly related to our sense of time. Mindfulness meditators train to be aware of their body states and therefore could be more accurate at interval timing. In this study, n = 22 experienced mindfulness meditators and n = 22 matched controls performed both, an acoustic and a visual duration reproduction task of 8, 14, and 20 s intervals, while heart rate and skin conductance were continuously assessed. In addition, participants accomplished a heart beat perception task and two selective attention tasks. Results revealed no differences between meditators and controls with respect to performance in duration reproduction or attentional capacities. Additionally no group difference in heart beat perception scores was found. Across all subjects, correlational analyses revealed several associations between performance in the duration reproduction tasks and psychophysiological changes, the latter being also related to heart beat perception scores. Furthermore, former findings of linearly increasing cardiac periods and decreasing skin conductance levels during the auditory duration estimation task (Meissner and Wittmann, 2011) could be replicated, and these changes could also be observed during a visual duration reproduction task. In contrast to our earlier findings, the heart beat perception test was not related with timing performance. Overall, although experienced meditators did not differ from matched controls with respect to duration reproduction and interoceptive awareness, this study adds significantly to the emerging view that time perception is related to autonomic regulation and awareness of body states.

Highlights

The diversity of psychological and neurophysiological models of time perception is indicative of the fact that the neural substrates and the processes accounting for the experience of time are still unknown (Wittmann and Paulus, 2009; Merchant et al, 2013)
We investigated the role of body signals, interoceptive awareness, and attentional capacities for interval timing by focusing on a group of participants who regularly train their attentional capacities to internal and external stimuli, namely experts in mindfulness meditation
Psychophysiological Changes in Duration Reproduction Tasks Cardiac Periods In both the auditory and visual reproduction tasks mean cardiac periods increased over time during the encoding intervals of 8, 14, and 20 s duration and decreased during the first 4 s after the tone had stopped (Figure 4)

Summary

Introduction

The diversity of psychological and neurophysiological models of time perception is indicative of the fact that the neural substrates and the processes accounting for the experience of time are still unknown (Wittmann and Paulus, 2009; Merchant et al, 2013). The correlations between duration reproduction accuracy and both, the slope of cardiac slowing and interoceptive awareness could be due to increased attentional capacities of good performers in time estimation tasks, who would be able to focus more adequately on time perception. In this scenario, the steeper slope of cardiac periods in good performers would reflect their higher attentional load, and the relationship with interoceptive awareness could be due to the recently reported association between interoceptive awareness and attention to external acoustic or visual stimuli that are used for presentation of temporal intervals (Matthias et al, 2009)

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