Shedding light on changes in subjective experience during an intensive contemplative retreat: the Lyon Assessment of Meditation Phenomenology (LAMP) questionnaire
Oussama Abdoun, Arnaud Poublan-Couzardot, Stéphane Offort, Giuseppe Pagnoni, Antoine Lutz
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational cohort |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 53 |
| Population | Experienced meditators on an intensive 10-day retreat |
| Intervention | open monitoring) |
| Duration | 10-day retreat |
| Topics | Meditation Philosophy of mind |
| Key findings | Over 60% of the dimensions assessed by the LAMP exhibited significant change during the retreat, with trajectories differing by meditation type and individual expertise, and three clusters of individual trajectories were associated with prior meditative experience and difficulties. |
Abstract
BACKGROUND: A significant share of meditation research relies on trait psychometric measures of mindfulness, which neglect the complex and dynamic unfolding of experiential processes entailed by meditation over time. However, there have been a few attempts to capture ongoing changes in experience during meditation. In this study, we integrated and expanded on 3 of these previous approaches to create a novel instrument, which we called the Lyon Assessment of Meditation Phenomenology (LAMP). This questionnaire encompasses contextual, conative, affective, somatic, attentional, cognitive, and metacognitive domains.METHODS: Fifty-three experienced meditators completed the LAMP after each meditation session during an intensive 10-day retreat. We modeled the time courses of the individual answers to each question using generalized additive modeling and automatically clustered participants using group-based trajectory modeling.RESULTS: Over 60% of the dimensions assessed by LAMP exhibited significant change during the retreat across the group, following distinct temporal trajectories. These trajectories reflected differences between meditation types (chiefly, focused attention and open monitoring) and individual expertise, supporting a previously proposed multidimensional phenomenological model of mindfulness-related practices. We also identified 3 clusters of individual temporal trajectories associated with prior meditative experience and difficulties experienced during the retreat. Finally, we replicated and extended core findings from mindfulness research on pain regulation.CONCLUSIONS: The proposed multidimensional experience-sampling approach provides a rich characterization of the dynamic aspects of meditative experience and may be used to deepen our knowledge of the phenomenology and mechanisms of meditation and meditation-based interventions.