Focused attention, open monitoring and loving kindness meditation: effects on attention, conflict monitoring, and creativity – A review
Open accessAbstract
Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a topic for scientific research and theories on meditation are becoming ever more specific. We distinguish between what is called focused Attention meditation, open Monitoring meditation, and loving kindness (or compassion) meditation. Research suggests that these meditations have differential, dissociable effects on a wide range of cognitive (control) processes, such as attentional selection, conflict monitoring, divergent, and convergent thinking. Although research on exactly how the various meditations operate on these processes is still missing, different kinds of meditations are associated with different neural structures and different patterns of electroencephalographic activity. In this review we discuss recent findings on meditation and suggest how the different meditations may affect cognitive processes, and we give suggestions for directions of future research.
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Mindfulness can enable a broad and mobile awareness that allows access to conflicted goals and distressing experiences.
“Varied strands of evidence indicate that mindfulness can enable a broad and mobile awareness that allows access to conflicted goals and distressing experiences.”
From Experiences of a transdiagnostic group, the <scp>T</scp>ake <scp>C</scp>ontrol <scp>C</scp>ourse, for clients with common mental health problems: A qualitative study (2018) · cites this paper as Lippelt et al., 2014
The “Meditation Types, Attentional Scope, and Endogenous Attention” section says open-monitoring meditation broadens attention and allows experiences to enter awareness; it also reports improved flexible visual attention. “Meditation Types and Conflict Monitoring” describes redirecting attention when conflicting thoughts arise. The paper does not specifically establish that this awareness provides access to conflicted goals or distressing experiences. The indexed passages provide no page numbers. (LLM, conf=0.83)
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- Authors
- Lippelt, D. P., Hommel, B., & Colzato, L. S.
- Affiliations
- Leiden University (NL)
- Corresponding author
- Colzato, Lorenza S.
- Venue
- Frontiers in Psychology
- Publisher
- Frontiers Media SA
- Published
- 2014-09-23
- Volume
- 5
- Pages
- 1083-1083
- ISSN
- 1664-1078 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC4171985
- OpenAlex
- W2106591755
- Cited by
- 278
- References
- 19
- Citations by year
- 2026: 11 · 2025: 26 · 2024: 22 · 2023: 29 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 26 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 23 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 20 · 2016: 14 · 2015: 13 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 2.42
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- cc-by
- Locations
- Frontiers in Psychology (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Clinical Psychology › Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Mind wandering and attention
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Religious studies › Indian and Buddhist Studies
- Keywords
- focused attention meditation, open monitoring meditation, loving-kindness meditation, compassion meditation, selective attention, conflict monitoring, divergent thinking, convergent thinking, creativity, cognitive control, neural correlates of meditation, EEG activity
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