Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention

“Hand dominance (L = left-handed; R = right-handed) was assessed by the Edinburgh Handedness Inventory (Oldfield, 1971).”

“…included the Big Five Inventory (BFI; John, Donahue, & Kentle, 1991), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI; Spielberger, Gorsuch, Lushene, Vagg, & Jacobs, 1983), the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977), and the Psychological Well-Being Scale (Ryff, 1989).”

“Voluntary attention—guided by goals, previous knowledge, or explicit instructions—can be directed to spatial locations (e.g., Posner, 1980) and moments in time (e.g., Correa, Lupiáñez, Madrid, & Tudela, 2006) to improve behavioral accuracy and efficiency.”

“The nonparametric index of perceptual sensitivity, A′ (Stanislaw & Todorov, 1999), was calculated from hit (correct response to a target) and false alarm (incorrect response to a nontarget) rates for each of eight contiguous 120-trial blocks during the sustained-attention task.”

“Vigilance research studies show that task factors such as perceptually difficult targets and working memory load increase information processing resource demands, leading to poorer performance on these tasks over time (Warm et al., 2008).”

“In the threshold procedure, the length of the short target line varied according to a parameter estimation (PEST) algorithm (Taylor & Creelman, 1967), which determined the short line length that participants could correctly detect at a given level of accuracy (e.g., 75%).”

“…of attention (Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008), while specifically suggesting that the enhanced sustained-attention ability that has been linked to long-term meditation practice (Brefczynski-Lewis et al., 2007; Valentine & Sweet, 1999) most likely reflects plasticity in the adult brain.”

“Longitudinal research on meditation training (1−3 months of full-time daily practice) in nonexperts suggests that meditation improves temporal attention (Slagter et al., 2007) and attentional alerting (1-month group in Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007).”

“However, research shows that some forms of training, such as practice on action video games, can improve performance on untrained attention tasks, suggesting that training may lead to the transfer of learned skills to new situations (for a review, see Green & Bavelier, 2008).”

“This metacognitive or meta-attentive aspect of Shamatha training may support the transfer of meditation skills to other domains (Wallace & Shapiro, 2006) and lead to the improvements in perception and attention that are reported in practitioners’ daily lives (Wallace, 1999, p. 185).”

“This interpretation is supported by electrophysiological studies that have linked improvements in perceptual sensitivity to early-stage perceptual processing (e.g., Luck et al., 1994).”

“For example, training-related improvements in baseline perception could improve vigilance by reducing the resource demands associated with discriminating difficult targets (Nuechterlein et al., 1983; Parasuraman & Mouloua, 1987).”

“Cross-sectional studies show that long-term meditation practitioners have superior sustained-attention skills in comparison with meditation-naive control participants (Brefczynski-Lewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007; Valentine & Sweet, 1999).”

“sustained attention, meditation, training, vigilance, discrimination, threshold Received 4/28/09; Revision accepted 10/3/09 (Nuechterlein, Parasuraman, & Jiang, 1983) or working memory load (Parasuraman, 1979), cause rapid and reliable decrements in perceptual sensitivity.”

“Using experimental stimuli similar to ours, Parasuraman and Mouloua (1987) demonstrated that both perceptual manipulations (changing the length difference between the target and nontarget lines) and working memory manipulations (requiring a comparison between the currently visible target and a…”

“Similarly, other kinds of attentional cues have been shown to improve vigilance (for a review, see MacLean et al., 2009).”

“Studies have demonstrated improvements in performance on vigilance tasks following repetitive practice (e.g., Parasuraman & Giambra, 1991), but no study has yet identified a general training regimen for reducing the vigilance decrement.”

“Changes in personal motivation during training also could have played a role in improved vigilance (e.g., Tomporowski & Tinsley, 1996).”

“, 2007), as well as a 3-month samatha retreat (MacLean et al., 2010).”

“One longitudinal study (3 months, 5 h/day) found that retreatants showed enhanced perceptual discrimination and vigilance, an observation that remained constant 3 months after the retreat ended (MacLean et al., 2010).”

“…of high stress (Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010), enhances attention (Brefczynski-Lewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007; MacLean et al., 2010; Slagter et al., 2007), improves visuospatial processing efficiency (Kozhevnikov, Louchakova, Josipovic, & Motes, 2009),…”

“A promising starting point in this endeavor could be to isolate different kinds of attentional training and to examine their impact by suitable measures (see MacLean et al., 2010, for a recent example of such an approach).”

“Individuals who completed mindfulness training were shown to remain vigilant longer on both visual (MacLean et al., 2010) and audio (listening) tasks (Lutz et al., 2009).”

“time variability and EEG brain response variability during continuous performance tasks [7,45].”

“Consequently, cultivating sustained attention ought to reduce mind-wandering, and indeed improvements to attentional control and perceptual discrimination are quantifiable benefits of intensive meditation training (MacLean et al., 2010).”

“In line with improvements in perceptual clarity, MacLean et al. (2010) reported improvements in visual perceptual thresholds in the context of a sustained attention continuous performance vigilance task after three months of intensive FA retreat experience compared to a matched control group.”

“Some researchers have become interested in studying meditation as a means of understanding and possibly enhancing attention, beginning to synthesize ideas from these two fields (Jha et al., 2007; Lutz et al., 2009; MacLean et al., 2010; Zeidan et al., 2010).”

“Focused attention promotes a sense of detachment from ongoing affective states and enhances cognitive control (MacLean et al., 2010; Zeidan et al., 2010c).”

“Given that this network has been repeatedly associated with markers of mind-wandering (Christoff et al., 2009; Mason et al., 2007), the improvement in sustained attention following mindful breathing observed in Study 2 may be mediated by diminished default-mode activation.”

“Training increases the ability to maintain engagement of self-regulatory neural circuits (PFC), resulting in improved sustained attention and emotion regulation (Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008; MacLean et al., 2010).”

“Correlation example: The meditation data In the meditation study, MacLean et al. (2010) tested the hypothesis of a relation between meditation time and visual acuity (see Fig.”

“…training leads to executive neuroplasticity and improved top-down resolution of response conflict, and suggest that attentional improvements reported elsewhere (MacLean et al., 2010; Sahdra et al., 2011) may have a basis in adaptive neuroplasticity of prefrontal central executive networks.”

“, 2008 for a recent review), sustaining attention control exhausts underlying mental resources (Maclean et al., 2010).”

“Unless otherwise specified, the experiments described in the following sections were conducted with nonclinical volunteers; only when participants were selected for special characteristics such as emotional vulnerability or clinical condition do we specify the basis for inclusion.”

“Whereas compassion meditation might increase compassionate behaviors through empathic processes and prosocial emotion, mindfulness-meditation might increase compassionate behaviors through a number of plausible mechanisms, including increased attention to all stimuli [21] or a reduction of self-related affective biase…”

“Other studies demonstrate that long-term mindfulness training strengthens alerting (93, 95), i.”

“…Lo, & Allen, 2008; Chiesa, Calatti, & Serretti, 2011; Fiocco & Mallya, 2015; Heeren, Van Broeck, & Philippot, 2009; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010; MacLean et al., 2010; Moore & Malinowski, 2009; Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, Zhanna, & Goolkasian, 2010).”

“…studies in adults have also found improvements in sustained attention (Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Kaul, Passafiume, Sargent, & O'Hara, 2010; MacLean et al., 2010; Valentine & Sweet, 1999), executive function and self-regulation (Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008; Heeren, Van Broeck, & Philippot,…”

“First, relative to untrained individuals, those who have been trained in mindfulness demonstrate superior executive attention skills (Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008; Hodgins & Adair, 2010; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Lutz et al., 2009; MacLean et al., 2010; Tang et al., 2007).”

“, 2009), greater attention regulation (BrefczynskiLewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007), and enhanced sensory processing and perceptual discrimination (Cahn, Delorme, & Polich, 2010; Kilpatrick et al., 2011; MacLean et al., 2010).”

“Specifically, it has been found to improve working memory and attentional processes [7–9] as well as perceptual abilities [10].”

“At the beginning of Retreat 1 (preretreat), participants first completed a threshold procedure (duration 10 min) to calibrate task difficulty for each individual (see MacLean et al., 2009; MacLean et al., 2010).”

“This suggests a dlPFC-specific pathway by which mindfulness may encourage executive control, which is further supported by recent evidence that mindfulness training enhances functional coupling between dlPFC and default mode network regions (10), as well as behavioral evidence that mindfulness increases performance on…”

“…can be conceptualized as off-task thoughts that co-opt attention (Smallwood, Beach, Schooler, & Handy, 2008; Smallwood & Schooler, 2006) possibly due to a failure of executive control processes required to maintain the focus of one’s attention on a primary task of interest(McVay & Kane, 2010).”

“Does regulating attention have any utility when applying mindfulness to one’s reactions to external cues above and beyond adopting the decentered perspective that cognitive responses to attractive stimuli are merely mental states, not subjectively real experiences? Clearly, attention training in itself has many unique…”

“In any case, whatever meditators are reporting on, it does not involve perceptual discrimination of explicit sensory stimulation, as in the study of visual acuity [36] or the standard 2PD task [23]; (ii) reports were retrospective: even if all experiences arose peripherally (e.”

“Engaging in formal mindfulness training reduces depressive symptoms and rumination while improving sustained attention (e.g., Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008) and perceptual sensitivity (e.g., MacLean et al., 2010).”

“Evidence also suggests that mindfulness training in the form of meditation improves sustained attention (Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2007; MacLean et al., 2010).”

“2009), perception and vigilance (MacLean et al., 2010).”

“At the same time, while such improvement were not observed after Theravada practices, there is evidence that Theravada meditations might lead to long-term improvement on attentional tasks [31,98,99].”

“In line with the notion that MT may strengthen such control processes, several prior studies have established that MT improves performance on measures of attention (e.g., Allen et al. 2012; Jensen et al. 2012; Jha et al. 2007; MacLean et al. 2010; Zanesco et al. 2013) and working memory (Jensen et al.”

“Meditation has been shown to be associated with alterations in brain structure [9–12], better mental health [13–17], improved attention [18, 19], greater emotional self-regulation [20–22], slower cellular aging [23–25], better academic performance [26, 27], and other outcomes.”

“Mindfulness training led to decreased perceptual thresholds in a visual discrimination task (MacLean et al., 2010), was associated with increased detection of visual stimuli in an “attentional blink task” in which a stimulus that is presented closely following an initial stimulus often goes…”

“Other types of meditation may have specific effects on perceptual, social cognitive, and affect regulatory systems (Kozhevnikov, Louchakova, Josipovic, & Motes, 2009; Lee et al., 2012; MacLean et al., 2010).”

“Imaging studies, however, demonstrate enhanced performance on tasks that require sustained attention (Kozasa et al., 2011; MacLean et al., 2010) as well as orienting and allocation of attentional resources (van den Hurk, Janssen, Giommi, Barendregt, & Gielen, 2010; van den Hurk, Giommi, Gielen,…”

“A recent study demonstrated that mindfulness meditation training increases perceptual sensitivity and makes it easier to maintain sustained attention (Maclean et al., 2010).”

“These include decreases in rumination (Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008), improvements in cognitive flexibility (Moore & Malinowski, 2009), working memory capacity and sustained attention (Chamber et al., 2008; Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010; MacLean et al., 2010; Mrazek, Franklin, Phillips, Baird, & Schoole…”

“Consistent with previous investigations (Brown et al., 1984; MacLean et al., 2010), we observed a trend toward an interaction between training program and perceptual threshold, F(1, 41) ϭ 2.91, p ϭ .095.”

“Furthermore, evidence suggests that MT can increase attention capacity using both cognitive/behavioral [38, 39] and direct neural methods including the P3 event-related potential (ERP) component [40], and may be effective with clinical-neurologic populations such as attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder [22] and tr…”

“For example, mindfulness practice has been shown to promote attentional regulation [5, 14–16] and increased executive control of automatic responses [17–20].”

“In terms of decreased sensory thresholds, studies of Tibetan Shamatha (MacLean et al., 2010) and Theravāda Vipassanā (Brown et al., 1984) practitioners who were not using visual objects as their primary target have found long-lasting (more than 5 months) decreases in visual perception thresholds.”

“Although attention includes many different aspects, four areas are thought to be associated with mindfulness skills: sustained attention, selective attention, switching and monitoring faculty (Bishop et al., 2004; Chiesa, Calati, & Serretti, 2011; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008;…”

“…of mindfulness meditation have found that extensive training improves perceptual discrimination and sensitivity (compared to waitlist controls; MacLean et al. 2010), and even one mindfulness meditation session may temporarily help individuals to ascertain the valence of positive stimuli…”

“Target height (the length of the short line determined by the visual threshold procedure) served as an index of participants’ ability to discriminate between target and non-target lines, with increases in target height indicating better visual discrimination (see [9]).”

“The literature contains a large number of conventional/traditional and mundane means for vigilance enhancement, including mental training [13], meditation [14], yoga [15,16], sports [17], exercise [18], caffeine [19], nicotine [20], diet and herbal extracts [21], chewing gum [22], and odor/fragrance exposure [23,24].”

“…who practiced 3 months of focusedattention meditation (Shamatha) demonstrated improved performance accuracy in sustained-attention tasks requiring perceptual discrimination of rare targets (MacLean et al., 2010) and were better able to inhibit habitual pre-potent responses (Sahdra et al., 2011).”

“…Ryff & Keyes, 1995), self-distancing and wise reasoning (Grossmann, Sahdra, & Ciarrochi, 2016), and self-regulation strategies such as sustained attention (MacLean et al., 2010) and response inhibition (Sahdra et al., 2011), to test whether profile membership meaningfully predicts these outcomes.”

“As mentioned, considerable research supports claims that contemplative practices enhance perceptual sensitivity and accuracy (MacLean et al., 2010; Walsh, 2014c).”

“Additionally, mindfulness training (involving attentional fixation on and nonjudgmental awareness of moment-tomoment experiences) can improve working memory and attention (Tang et al., 2007; Lutz et al., 2008; Jha et al., 2010; MacLean et al., 2010).”

“Mindfulness and mind-wandering represent opposing constructs with respect to sustained attention, and converging research indicates that mindfulness training is an effective tool for enhancing focus and reducing mindwandering (Zanesco et al., 2016; Mrazek et al., 2013; MacLean et al., 2010).”

“MacLean et al. (2010) in particular report improvements in sustained attention (i.e., likely decreased mind wandering) in a randomized assessment of intensive meditation training that included FA as well as other practices.”

“The most in-depth studies of prolonged meditation from the neuroscience laboratory of Clifford Saron and colleagues demonstrate the efficacy of developing sustained attention for managing our emotional resonance to suffering (MacLean et al. 2010).”

“[41] Walking meditation could foster auditory and visual discrimination skills.”

“It has also been shown that meditation can redirect an individual’s attention and increase one’s ability to process information quickly – and in considerable detail (Hodgins & Adair, 2010; MacLean et al., 2010; Van Leeuwen et al., 2012).”

“CPT (Corbett et al., 2009; MacLean et al., 2010): Participants received instructions to focus on the screen, saw one integer appear on the screen at a time, and had to press the spacebar when a speci fi c number (e.g., the integer ‘ 6 ’ ) or letter (e.g., ‘ K ’ or ‘ X ’ ) appeared.”

“, 2009 ; MacLean et al .”