August 31, 2025
Amit Bernstein, Noga Aviad, Yuval Hadash et al.
preprint
Research on mindfulness meditation has largely relied on reductionist decomposition, which isolates discrete components and mechanisms but fails to capture how change emerges from continuous, nonlinear, and recursive interactions across multiple timescales. Dynamical Systems (DS) theory and methods offer a powerful framework to address this gap. A DS organizational framework structured around complex interaction dynamics, nonlinear causality, and multiscale temporal dynamics can inform theory-building, empirical research, and intervention science. Leading psychological and neuroscientific theories align with DS theory, unlike much empirical research. Future directions include developing formal DS models, collecting high-dimensional multiscale data, and using analytic tools for complex dynamical change.
July 31, 2023
Yuval Hadash, Omer Dar, Iftach Amir et al.
preprint
Decades of research on how mindfulness training affects attention have produced mixed results. To explain these findings, the Mindfulness Internal Attention (MIA) framework proposes that mindfulness primarily trains internal attention—processes focused on internally generated experiences like bodily sensations and thoughts. These internal attentional skills then generalize to late-stage external processes that handle abstracted information, such as inhibitory control and working memory updating. However, mindfulness training is unlikely to affect early-stage external processes that handle raw sensory input, like alerting or orienting to visual stimuli. Internal attention is proposed as essential for key mindfulness benefits like decentering and acceptance. A critical review of empirical findings supports this framework.
Annual Review of Psychology
January 1, 2026
Yuval Hadash, Omer Dar, Iftach Amir et al.
A new framework, the Mindfulness Internal Attention (MIA) framework, proposes that mindfulness training primarily targets internal attention—processes operating on internally generated or stored information—rather than early-stage external attention. The framework reviews evidence suggesting that mindfulness training affects executive functions and working memory shared between internal and late-stage external attention, but does not affect early-stage external attention processes that do not share cognitive resources with internal attention. This account reconciles the paradoxical disparity between theoretical predictions and mixed empirical findings from over two decades of research on attention and mindfulness.
The American psychologist
January 1, 2026
Amit Bernstein, Noga Aviad, Yuval Hadash et al.
Mindfulness meditation research has largely used reductionist methods that isolate individual components and mechanisms, which is ill-suited for studying how change emerges from continuous, nonlinear, and recursive interactions across multiple timescales. Dynamical systems theory and methods offer a powerful alternative framework. The authors propose an organizational framework structured around complex interaction dynamics, nonlinear causality, and multiscale temporal dynamics. They examine how leading psychological and neuroscientific theories align with dynamical systems theory, unlike most empirical research. Future directions include developing formal dynamical systems theory and computational models, collecting high-dimensional multiscale data, and using analytic tools that model complex dynamical change.