PsyCh journal
March 1, 2019
Sylvie Droit-Volet, Michael Dambrun
72 citations
People often describe time as passing quickly or slowly. This article examines how judgments of time passage relate to judgments of physical durations, including during meditation when consciousness is altered. The authors distinguish between the "self-time perspective," "self-duration" (internal duration), and "world-duration" (external duration). They link self-time perspective to the narrative self and self-duration to the minimal self, a connection supported by qualitative analysis of testimonials from four meditators. Awareness of self-duration is tied to awareness of the embodied self; when bodily consciousness decreases, the subjective experience of internal time changes. The mechanisms by which the sense of self disappears and one feels outside time during meditation remain unclear.
Mindfulness
May 1, 2020
Adam W. Hanley, Michael Dambrun, Eric L Garland
66 citations
Five sessions of mindfulness training, compared with an active listening control, led healthy young adults to report a decreased sense of body boundary dissolution and a more allocentric (less self-centered) spatial frame of reference. The effect on spatial frame of reference was mediated by the reduction in perceived body boundaries. The findings suggest that even brief mindfulness practice can shift the experience of self, relaxing the boundary between self and environment and extending the spatial frame of reference beyond the physical body.
PLoS One
October 18, 2019
Sylvie Droit-Volet, Magali Chaulet, Frédéric Dutheil et al.
22 citations
Mindfulness meditation alters time perception in opposite directions depending on the interval length. In two experiments, participants who meditated for 15 minutes underestimated intervals of 15 to 50 seconds but overestimated intervals of 2 to 6 minutes, compared to a control exercise. Across all durations, meditation made time feel as though it passed faster. The meditation exercise increased present-moment awareness and happiness while reducing anxiety. Statistical analyses showed that present-moment focus mediated the effect on time estimates for long durations. The opposing effects are explained by different cognitive mechanisms: attention for short intervals and memory for long intervals.
PeerJ
January 1, 2020
Sylvie Droit-Volet, Sophie Monceau, Michael Dambrun et al.
17 citations
People who experienced an out-of-body illusion in virtual reality judged time intervals as longer when they felt a stronger sense of body ownership over a mannequin. Participants viewed a mannequin's arm as if it were their own while receiving synchronous or asynchronous strokes on their actual body. After synchronous stroking, they felt touches on the mannequin more intensely and estimated the interval between two touches as longer. The more pronounced the out-of-body experience, the greater the time distortion. These results suggest that awareness of the body-self is important for time perception, supporting the theory of embodied time.
Psychological Reports
April 26, 2024
Pierre De Oliveira, Catherine Juneau, Céline Stinus et al.
11 citations
A two-stage study examined how metacognitive processes of decentering—meta-awareness, (dis)identification with internal experiences, and (non)reactivity to thought content—relate to self-transcendence experiences in daily life, including self-transcendent emotions, flow proneness, and an interconnected identity. The first stage validated the French version of the Metacognitive Processes of Decentering Scale (MPoD-t) with 374 participants. The second stage, with 294 participants, found that meta-awareness mediated the link between meditative practice and self-transcendent emotions or flow, while (dis)identification with internal experiences mediated the link between practice and an interconnected identity.
International Journal of Wellbeing
October 1, 2024
Michael Dambrun, Adam W. Hanley, Eric L Garland et al.
5 citations
Practicing brief attentional mindfulness meditations—either a body scan or breath-focused meditation—can boost positive emotions such as gratitude, elevation, and pride, and in turn improve well-being and inner peace. Two online experiments showed that a 21-minute session increased these emotions, an effect explained by self-transcendence. A shorter 11-minute session replicated the emotional boost, and two self-transcendent emotions (elevation and gratitude) specifically mediated improvements in well-being and inner peace, while pride did not.
Cognition & Emotion
September 1, 2021
Catherine Juneau, Rebecca Shankland, Bärbel Knäuper et al.
People tend to automatically approach pleasant things and avoid unpleasant ones. Two experiments tested whether mindfulness practices and the personality trait of equanimity can reduce this tendency. In the first experiment, 84 participants were randomly assigned to a breathing meditation, a body-scan meditation, or an active control condition before completing an Approach/Avoidance Task. In the second experiment, 71 participants were grouped by high or low trait equanimity. Breathing meditation and higher equanimity each reduced automatic approach and avoidance biases, while body-scan meditation did not. The findings suggest that both brief mindfulness practice and stable equanimity can weaken automatic motivational responses to positive and negative stimuli.
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2016
Michael Dambrun
A reduction in the salience of perceived body boundaries leads to increased happiness and decreased anxiety. Participants who practiced a body scan meditation reported greater happiness and less anxiety than those in a control condition, and the change in happiness was mediated by the change in perceived body boundaries, suggesting that selflessness elicits happiness through the dissolution of perceived body boundaries.