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Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention
Open accessAbstract
The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary attention cannot be sustained for extended periods of time. In the laboratory, sustained-attention failure is manifest as a decline in perceptual sensitivity with increasing time on task, known as the vigilance decrement. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training (~5 hr/day for 3 months), which consisted of meditation practice that involved sustained selective attention on a chosen stimulus (e.g., the participant’s breath). Participants were randomly assigned either to receive training first ( n = 30) or to serve as waiting-list controls and receive training second ( n = 30). Training produced improvements in visual discrimination that were linked to increases in perceptual sensitivity and improved vigilance during sustained visual attention. Consistent with the resource model of vigilance, these results suggest that perceptual improvements can reduce the resource demand imposed by target discrimination and thus make it easier to sustain voluntary attention.
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“Another important constituent that has emerged in the literature is that mindfulness and other meditations improve internal awareness and that developed capacity has led to increased clarity of mental processes leading to improvements in meta-awareness (Cahn and Polich, 2006; MacLean et al., 2010; Raffone and Srinivasan, 2010; Schmalzl et al., 2015).”
From Mindfulness, Interoception, and the Body: A Contemporary Perspective (2019) · cites this paper as MacLean et al., 2010
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In the citing paper
“Open monitoring is also believed to involve higher-order meta-awareness (MacLean et al., 2010; Schmalzl et al., 2015) enabling an objective witnessing of one’s stream of thoughts and experiences.”
From Mindfulness, Interoception, and the Body: A Contemporary Perspective (2019) · cites this paper as MacLean et al., 2010
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In the citing paper
“Mindfulness practices have been associated with benefits for coping with stress, anxiety, and depression [23,25,26,27], improving compassion and increasing prosocial (e.g., helping or relationship-promoting) behaviors [28,29,30], bolstering attention and working (e.g., short-term) memory [31,32], improving self-regulatory abilities (e.g., self-control) [33], and supporting physical health [34,35,”
From Being in the moment so you can keep moving forward: Mindfulness and rumination mediate the relationship between attachment orientations and negative conflict styles (2020) · cites this paper as [32]
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In the citing paper
“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).”
From United we stand: emphasizing commonalities across cognitive-behavioral therapies. (2013) · cites this paper as MacLean et al., 2010
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“empirical evidence also suggests that arousal is generated during specific meditative practices. For instance, the generation of arousal during meditation has been observed in Hindu Tantric practices (e.g., [121, 122]) as well as in several Vajrayana practices (e.g., [27, 28])”
From The Influence of Buddhist Meditation Traditions on the Autonomic System and Attention (2015) · cites this paper as [121]
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Citations
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(2022) · Journal of Consciousness Studies · doi:10.53765/20512201 · Cited by 6,852
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Sorted by citations
Hölzel, B. K., Lazar, S. W., Gard, T., Schuman-Olivier, Z., Vago, D. R., & Ott, U. (2011) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691611419671 · Cited by 3,024
“, 2007), as well as a 3-month samatha retreat (MacLean et al., 2010).”
The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation
Tang, Y.-Y., Hölzel, B. K., & Posner, M. I. (2015) · Nature reviews. Neuroscience · doi:10.1038/nrn3916 · Cited by 2,889
Vago, D. R., & Silbersweig, D. A. (2012) · Frontiers in Human Neuroscience · doi:10.3389/fnhum.2012.00296 · Cited by 1,310
“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).”
BackgroundDiamond, A., & Ling, D. S. (2016) · Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience · doi:10.1016/j.dcn.2015.11.005 · Cited by 1,177
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“…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),…”
Metadata
- Authors
- MacLean, K. A., Ferrer, E., Aichele, S. R., Bridwell, D. A., Zanesco, A. P., Jacobs, T. L., King, B. G., Rosenberg, E. L., Sahdra, B. K., Shaver, P. R., Wallace, B. A., Mangun, G. R., & Saron, C. D.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Davis (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- University of California, Santa Barbara (US)
- Corresponding author
- MacLean, Katherine A.
- ORCID
- Venue
- Psychological Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-05-11
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 829-839
- ISSN
- 0956-7976 (ISSN-L)
- 1467-9280
- PMC
- PMC3132583
- OpenAlex
- W2151443397
- Cited by
- 623
- References
- 45
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 21 · 2024: 31 · 2023: 97 · 2022: 18 · 2021: 33 · 2020: 52 · 2019: 43 · 2018: 39 · 2017: 53 · 2016: 47 · 2015: 47 · 2014: 30 · 2013: 40 · 2012: 33
- FWCI
- 18.62
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Locations
- Psychological Science (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
- Research Bank (Australian Catholic University) (submittedVersion)
- University of Birmingham Research Portal (University of Birmingham) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- National Science Foundation
- Fetzer Institute
- National Institutes of Health (5r01mh055714-13)
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
- National Institute of Mental Health (R01-MH055714)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Mind wandering and attention
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Sleep and Work-Related Fatigue
- Keywords
- meditation training, sustained attention, vigilance decrement, perceptual discrimination, perceptual sensitivity, visual discrimination, selective attention, attentional fatigue, mindfulness
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Aged, Arousal, Attention, Discrimination, Psychological, Female, Humans, Male, Middle Aged, Visual Perception, Meditation, Young Adult
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