Psychological Science
March 28, 2013
Michael D. Mrazek, Michael S. Franklin, Dawa T. Phillips et al.
1,067 citations
A 2-week mindfulness-training course reduced distracting thoughts and improved performance on cognitive tasks. In a randomized controlled investigation, participants who completed mindfulness training showed higher GRE reading-comprehension scores and greater working memory capacity compared to controls, while also reporting fewer distracting thoughts during these tasks. The improvements were driven by reduced mind wandering, particularly among those initially prone to distraction. The findings indicate that cultivating mindfulness can enhance cognitive function broadly.
Psychological Science
June 1, 2010
Katherine A Maclean, Emilio Ferrer, Stephen R Aichele et al.
625 citations
Voluntary attention cannot be sustained for long periods, leading to a decline in perceptual sensitivity called the vigilance decrement. Training involving meditation practice—about 5 hours daily for 3 months—improved sustained attention. Participants were randomly assigned to receive training first or serve as waiting-list controls. Training improved visual discrimination, linked to increases in perceptual sensitivity and vigilance during sustained visual attention. These results suggest that perceptual improvements reduce the resource demand of target discrimination, making it easier to sustain voluntary attention.
Psychological Science
December 6, 2013
Andrew Hafenbrack, Zoe Kinias, Sigal G. Barsade
351 citations
A series of four studies (one correlational and three experimental) shows that mindfulness meditation reduces the sunk-cost bias—the tendency to let unrecoverable prior costs influence current decisions. Increased mindfulness was linked to greater resistance to this bias. Laboratory experiments found that a mindfulness-meditation induction increased resistance. The bias was attenuated by shifting temporal focus away from the future and past and by reducing negative affect, both achieved through mindfulness meditation.
Psychological Science
March 24, 2004
Willoughby B. Britton, Richard R. Bootzin
156 citations
People who report having had a near-death experience during a life-threatening event show more temporal lobe epileptiform brain activity and more temporal lobe epilepsy symptoms than control subjects. However, contrary to earlier findings linking mystical experiences to the right temporal lobe, the epileptiform activity was almost entirely in the left hemisphere. Near-death experiencers do not show dysfunctional stress reactions such as dissociation, posttraumatic stress disorder, or substance abuse; instead they have positive coping styles. They also have altered sleep patterns: shorter sleep duration and delayed REM sleep. The findings suggest that altered temporal lobe functioning may play a role in near-death experiences and that these individuals are physiologically distinct from the general population.
Psychological Science
July 1, 2014
Zohar Z Bronfman, Noam Brezis, Hilla Jacobson et al.
140 citations
People can automatically perceive the color diversity of an unattended visual display without sacrificing their ability to report a cued letter. This finding suggests that detailed visual information, such as the variety of colors, is registered outside focal attention and does not consume working memory resources. The result supports the idea that visual experience may overflow what can be reported, offering a way to study phenomenal consciousness without relying solely on limited-capacity report.
Psychological Science
April 28, 2009
Michael A. Sayette, Erik D. Reichle, Jonathan W. Schooler
135 citations
Alcohol increases mind wandering while reducing the likelihood of noticing it. In a study of 54 male social drinkers, those who consumed alcohol (0.82 g/kg) were significantly more likely to report zoning out when probed during a reading task, compared with those who drank a placebo. After accounting for this increase in mind wandering, alcohol also lowered the probability of catching oneself zoning out. The findings suggest alcohol alters both experiential consciousness and metaconsciousness, making drinkers more prone to lapses in attention without awareness.
Psychological Science
July 1, 2013
Bethany E Kok, Kimberly A. Coffey, Michael Cohn et al.
A longitudinal field experiment tested whether generating positive emotions through loving-kindness meditation can improve physical health by strengthening perceptions of social connections. Participants randomly assigned to the meditation group showed increased positive emotions compared to a waiting-list control group, an effect that was stronger for those with higher baseline vagal tone, a measure of physical health. Increased positive emotions led to further increases in vagal tone, and this effect was mediated by greater perceptions of social connections. The findings suggest an upward-spiral dynamic in which positive emotions, social connections, and physical health mutually reinforce each other.