Training novice practitioners to reliably report their meditation experience using shared phenomenological dimensions.
Oussama Abdoun, Jelle Zorn, Stefano Poletti, Enrico Fucci, Antoine Lutz
Consciousness and Cognition February 1, 2019 DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2019.01.004 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Neurophenomenological experiment Longitudinal Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Novice meditation practitioners |
| Intervention | Meditation training protocol |
| Duration | Several weeks of daily practice |
| Topics | Meditation Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Demand characteristics Desirable responding First-person Neurophenomenology Self-reports Training |
| Citations | 44 |
| Key findings | Novice practitioners' self-reported phenomenological ratings were sensitive to meditation state, dose, and fatigue, and correlated with behavioral measures, with effects better predicted by practice features than by desirable responding. |
Abstract
Empirical descriptions of the phenomenology of meditation states rely on practitioners' ability to provide accurate information on their experience. We present a meditation training protocol that was designed to equip naive participants with a theoretical background and experiential knowledge that would enable them to share their experience. Subsequently, novices carried on with daily practice during several weeks before participating in experiments. Using a neurophenomenological experiment designed to explore two different meditation states (focused attention and open monitoring), we found that self-reported phenomenological ratings (i) were sensitive to meditation states, (ii) reflected meditation dose and fatigue effects, and (iii) correlated with behavioral measures (variability of response time). Each of these effects was better predicted by features of participants' daily practice than by desirable responding. Our results provide evidence that novice practitioners can reliably report their experience along phenomenological dimensions and warrant the future investigation of this training protocol with a longitudinal design.