Expert mindfulness meditators show better orienting and executive attention than age- and gender-matched controls, as measured by the attention network test. The 20 meditators had smaller differences in reaction time and error scores, indicating more efficient attentional processing. Extensive mindfulness meditation appears to reduce the fraction of errors for responses with the same reaction time, suggesting that mental training can increase the efficiency of attentional processing.
Brief mindfulness-based meditation accelerates learning from positive outcomes and increases exploratory decision-making under uncertainty. In a probabilistic selection task with computational modeling, participants who meditated showed faster learning rates after positive prediction errors, a greater tendency to explore rather than exploit choices, and more cautious responses compared to a no-meditation control condition. These effects reveal how even short meditative practices can shape learning and decision-making processes, suggesting potential for mindfulness-based interventions to reduce biases in social-cognitive functioning.