Mind-wandering in relation to meditation.

Beijaert, R. (Ronne) (2014) Mind-wandering in relation to meditation. thesis, Medicine.

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Abstract

It is very difficult for us to sustain attention, as is evident from the prevalence of mind-wandering. Recently, methods have been developed to quantify this mind-wandering process. We examined whether frequency and content of mind-wandering are influenced by the practice of meditation. We compared the performance on two different attentional tasks (‘Choice Reaction Time’ and ‘Working Memory’ task) during states of focused attention meditation (were one has to focus on an object) and states of open monitoring meditation (were one has to be aware of whatever arises in the ‘outer’ or ‘inner’ environment). We did this for novice meditators. In addition to measuring mind-wandering behaviorally, we used pupil dilation as a more continuous proxy for mind-wandering. We found no significant change in patterns of mind-wandering with respect to the meditative state. To confirm a possible impact of meditation, further research with advanced meditators will be necessary to confirm this.

Item Type:	Thesis (Thesis)
Supervisor name:	Nijholt, Dr Ingrid and Dept of Artificial Intelligence
Supervisor name:	Vugt, Dr Marieke van
Faculty:	Medical Sciences
Date Deposited:	25 Jun 2020 10:44
Last Modified:	25 Jun 2020 10:44
URI:	https://umcg.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/566

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