Mindfulness meditation, time judgment and time experience: Importance of the time scale considered (seconds or minutes)
Sylvie Droit-Volet, Magali Chaulet, Frédéric Dutheil, Michael Dambrun
PLoS One October 18, 2019 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0223567 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Controlled experiment Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Intervention | Mindfulness meditation |
| Duration | 30-min meditation or control exercise, with first 15 minutes before judgments |
| Topics | Anxiety Meditation |
| Keywords | Time perception Duration music Cognition Interval graph theory Audiology Physical therapy Clinical psychology |
| Citations | 22 |
| Key findings | Mindfulness meditation leads to underestimation of short intervals (15–50 s) and overestimation of long intervals (2–6 min), with participants always reporting time passing faster during meditation. |
Abstract
This manuscript presents two studies on the effect of mindfulness meditation on duration judgment and its relationship to the subjective experience of time when the interval durations are on the second or the minute time scale. After the first 15 minutes of a 30-min meditation or control exercise, meditation-trained participants judged interval durations of 15 to 50 s or 2 to 6 min, during which they performed either a mindfulness meditation exercise or a control exercise. The participants' scores on the self-reported scales indicated the effectiveness of the meditation exercise, as it increased the level of present-moment awareness and happiness and decreased that of anxiety. The results showed an underestimation of time for the short interval durations and an overestimation of time for the long intervals, although the participants always reported that time passed faster with meditation than with the control exercise. Further statistical analyses revealed that the focus on the present-moment significantly mediated the exercise effect on the time estimates for long durations. The inversion in time estimates between the two time scales is explained in terms of the different mechanisms underlying the judgment of short and long durations, i.e., the cognitive mechanisms of attention and memory, respectively.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |
Citations in the library
Cited by 6
- Embodied time and the out-of-body experience of the self. PeerJ 2020
- Mindfulness, Subjective Cognitive Functioning, Sleep Timing and Time Expansion during COVID-19 Lockdown: A Longitudinal Study in Italy Clocks & Sleep May 30, 2023
- The effect of mindfulness meditation on the perceived duration of pain Journal of Cognitive Psychology December 7, 2022
- A comparative study of time perception in long-term meditators and non-meditators. Acta Psychologica June 1, 2026
- Subjective Time in Ordinary and Non-ordinary States of Consciousness: How Interoceptive Feelings Inform Us About the Passage of Time. Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences 2025
and 1 more in the library
Cites 22
- How Does Mindfulness Meditation Work? Proposing Mechanisms of Action From a Conceptual and Neural Perspective Perspectives on Psychological Science October 14, 2011
- Effectiveness of a meditation-based stress reduction program in the treatment of anxiety disorders American Journal of Psychiatry July 1, 1992
- Cultivating mindfulness: effects on well‐being Journal of Clinical Psychology May 16, 2008
- Neural mechanisms of attentional control in mindfulness meditation Frontiers in Neuroscience 2013
- Minding one’s emotions: Mindfulness training alters the neural expression of sadness. Emotion February 1, 2010
and 17 more in the library