A Multilevel Approach to Explore the Wandering Mind and Its Connections with Mindfulness and Personality.
Damiano Cantone, Susanna Feruglio, Cristiano Crescentini, Sabrina Cinot, Alessio Matiz
Behavioral Sciences September 18, 2021 DOI: 10.3390/bs11090125 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Preliminary pre-post intervention study Qualitative Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 9 |
| Population | Healthy young individuals |
| Intervention | Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training |
| Measures | free association task, attentional task with thought-probes, questionnaire for the phenomenological characteristics of mind wandering, Temperament and Character Inventory |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Personality Mind wandering |
| Key points | After Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation training, nine healthy young adults showed fewer repetitive and self-relevant thoughts, better performance on an attentional task, lower verbal productivity in free associations, and fewer utterances expressing anxiety or stress. The authors present these as preliminary findings limited by the small sample and the Covid-19 pandemic. |
Abstract
We propose an innovative approach to study Mind Wandering (MW), and we present an application of this methodology to study the effects of a Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation (MOM) training. We assessed individuals' MW through a free association task and an attentional task with thought-probes combined with a questionnaire for the phenomenological characteristic of each MW episode. We used the Temperament and Character Inventory to assess participants' personality traits and their associations with measures of MW. Our study was limited by the course of the Covid-19 pandemic and only nine healthy young individuals completed the testing sessions, which were carried out before and after the MOM training. After MOM, participants showed fewer repetitive and self-relevant thoughts and indices of better performance in the attentional task; the linguistic analysis of participants' free associations showed lower verbal productivity and a decrease in utterances that expressed anxiety/stress. Overall, we foresee that future studies could replicate our preliminary findings with larger samples and in a period without a global health emergency. This multilevel approach to the study of MW may allow researchers to gain a broader view of the phenomenon, considering its occurrence, qualitative characteristics, impact on cognitive tasks, malleability via mindfulness or other psychological interventions, and relations with personality traits.
Comparable studies
Other non-randomized and open-label trials on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Relation to Quality of Life, Mood, Symptoms of Stress, and Immune Parameters in Breast and Prostate Cancer Outpatients Early-stage breast and prostate cancer patients | 2003 | Pre-post intervention study | n = 59 |
| Exploring self‐compassion and empathy in the context of mindfulness‐based stress reduction (MBSR) Community sample | 2010 | Pre-post intervention study | |
| Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Lowers Psychological Distress In Medical Students Second-year medical students | 2003 | Prospective nonrandomized cohort-controlled study | n = 302 |
| Intensive meditation training, immune cell telomerase activity, and psychological mediators. Retreat participants and matched controls | 2011 | Controlled trial with wait-list control group | n = 60 |
| The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Training for Children with ADHD and Mindful Parenting for their Parents Children aged 8-12 with ADHD and their parents | 2011 | Within-group waitlist controlled trial | n = 22 |
Citations in the library
Cited by 3
- Resting-state BOLD temporal variability of the default mode network predicts spontaneous mind wandering, which is negatively associated with mindfulness skills. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience January 22, 2025
- Cardiac and ocular correlates of mind wandering in meditators and non-meditators during a sustained attention to response task Current Psychology August 1, 2026
- A flexible analytic wavelet transform and ensemble bagged tree model for electroencephalogram-based meditative mind-wandering detection Healthcare Analytics December 7, 2023
Cites 20
- A default mode of brain function Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences January 16, 2001
- Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology Science and Practice 2004
- How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective Perspectives on Psychological Science October 14, 2011
- Experience sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind wandering. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences May 26, 2009
- Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences November 23, 2011
and 15 more in the library