No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Time perception, mindfulness and attentional capacities in transcendental meditators and matched controls
Abstract
Only a few studies have investigated the sense of time in experienced meditators. In the current case–control study, we investigated whether 20 practitioners in transcendental meditation (TM) showed differences in the perception of time as compared to 20 matched controls. Perception of time was assessed with a battery of psychophysical tasks including duration reproduction and time estimation tasks in the milliseconds-to-minutes range as well as with psychometric instruments related to subjective time and assessments concerning the subjective passage of time. Attentional capacities were measured with the Attention Network Test. Trait-mindfulness was assessed with the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory. Results indicate that the TM meditators performed more consistently in the duration reproduction tasks in the multiple seconds' range and responded more accurately in the time estimation tasks in the minutes' range as well as in the duration discrimination task than controls. Self-rated mindfulness was more pronounced in meditators, while attentional capacities did not differ. In conclusion, experts in TM performed more accurately in psychophysical time perception tasks and had higher mindfulness than non-meditating controls. Whether these differences are causally related to the practice of meditation should be investigated in future studies.
... The majority of participants were female. The average age reported ranged between 19.5 (Muro et al., 2017) and 39.9 (Schötz et al., 2016), with missing data from three studies (Drake et al., 2008;Fuentes et al., 2022;Wittmann et al., 2015a, b). ...
... Interestingly, Schötz et al. (2016) identified a significantly higher score on the present fatalistic perspective for a small sample of experienced meditators (n = 20) with higher mindful presence and acceptance. This was rather an unexpected finding, considering the correlations of fatalistic overview of present experiences with lower mindfulness traits outlined above. ...
... Rights reserved. often reported to aid mental health and improve subjective well-being (Fuentes et al., 2022;Muro et al., 2017;Schötz et al., 2016;Seema & Sircova, 2013). In this light, emphasis on a positive view of past experiences as well as having an optimistic outlook on future possibilities appears to be vital for developing a BTP. ...
Objectives
Research on the effects of time perspectives and dispositional mindfulness on psychological well-being can be potentially insightful. However, time perspective and dispositional mindfulness constructs have mostly been studied separately, leaving room for discussion regarding their interactions. There is, so far, a limited number of empirical studies and no systematic review on this area of research. This systematic review thus aimed at providing an informative outline.
Method
Key databases including Scopus and Web of Knowledge were screened, and the most recent search was conducted in June 2023. Initially, 593 entries were found to meet the criterion of cross-sectional design. Final analysis incorporated the narrative synthesis strategy for resulting 16 eligible articles.
Results
Dispositional mindfulness is closely related to a flexible shift in time perspectives, called the balanced time perspective. In general, dispositional mindfulness was found to positively correlate with an optimistic view of both the past and the future, and it was also positively linked to savoring the present moment experiences. Furthermore, a non-judgmental focus is central to mindful decentering when being attentive to the actual characteristics of present stimuli.
Conclusions
The balanced time perspective is an important construct possibly linking dispositional mindfulness and time perspectives. The present-eudaimonic perspective, self-compassion, and decentering are variables that can further help guide research in outlining complex interactions that also relate to psychological well-being. Future research is advised to include longitudinal and experimental designs for a more comprehensive understanding of relevant interactions.
Preregistration
This study was preregistered to PROSPERO with the number CRD42021241388.
... The outcome of a number of investigations suggesting associations between trait mindfulness and the experience of time have compared (a) experienced meditators and participants with no mediation experience and (b) meditation-naïve individuals with different mindfulness levels according to self-report scales. A slowing down of the passage of time in everyday life has been systematically reported when comparing meditation experts to control participants without meditation experience Schötz et al., 2016;Wittmann et al., 2015). Concerning the judgment of short durations (0.8 to 2.0 s), however, no differences between individuals who usually practice meditation and naïve participants have been found (Droit-Volet and Heros, 2017). ...
... Results from the correlations between meditation experience and the FMI subscales and the sequencing variables at t1 are listed in Table 26. Although after conducting Bonferroni adjustment no significant correlation became apparent, we consider that, because of their coherence within recent research data Schötz et al., 2016), they may deserve our interest. Acceptance and Presence sub-scales of the FMI; Significant correlation coefficients: *p < .05, ...
... When answering to this question we should bear in mind the weakness of the correlations found between the factors of the FMI and the psychophysical tasks (i.e., in the range of r = -0.21 to r = -0.25). Nevertheless, in light of some recent research (Schötz et al., 2016;, we consider justifiable the discussion of these findings. ...
The experience of the present moment and the bodily self are modulated in altered states of consciousness such as during meditation. Over the last years, research has focused on reporting meditation-related changes on the explicit experience of duration. However, the effects of meditation on the implicit temporal structure of conscious perception pertaining to the present moment experience have not been explored so far.
The major aim of this work was to investigate how states of mindfulness meditation change the temporal span of the present moment experience. A further purpose was to explore the effects of heart rate variability (HRV) and breathing rate in order to clarify the role of mind-body interactions on the present moment experience. Finally, individual differences (e.g. mindfulness, time perspective, daydreaming) and emotional states (e.g. arousal, emotional valence, perceived body and space) which may influence the experience of the present moment, were investigated.
To this end, the present moment was operationalized using three psychophysical tasks (i.e., the metronome task, the Necker cube, and the sequencing task) for testing two different levels of temporal integration (i.e. functional level and subjective present) across modalities (i.e. visual and auditory). We performed a longitudinal study including two measurement time points (i.e. pre and post interventions) within each of the three study sessions. Participants having meditation experience were recruited and assigned to two matched groups (with n = 47 individuals) corresponding to the two experimental conditions (i.e., interventions). The interventions were either a 10-minute meditation session (meditation) or a 10-minute session of listening to a recorded story (story). Participants’ performance in the psychophysical tasks, conducted on three consecutive days, was compared before and after the interventions. The heart rate and breathing activity were recorded during the intervention and compared to a resting-state condition in order to examine whether physiological changes during meditation would affect a) the temporal integration intervals of metronome beats, b) the dwell times in the Necker cube task, and c) the implicit and explicit detection of asynchronies in the sequencing task.
Using mediation analyses, we found that in participants who meditated, meditation-induced states and autonomic physiological changes led to an expanded temporal integration in the metronome task concerning the subjective present in the auditory modality. Furthermore, different components of self-attributed mindfulness (i.e. presence and acceptance) were associated with greater accuracy (i.e., as measured with the explicit sequence-threshold) and
ix
enhanced implicit time processing (i.e., as measured with the Simon effect) at the functional level. Such effects were not seen for the visual ambiguous figure of the Necker cube (another measure to capture the experienced duration of the present moment) and the detection of sequences of visual stimuli in the millisecond range (capturing the functional moment). The results of the metronome task suggest that mindfulness-meditation states and mindfulness as a trait modulate certain temporal integration mechanisms compatible with the experience of the present moment. These temporal changes seem to be intimately related to autonomic activity providing further understanding of the role of mind-body interactions on the present moment. Additional work will be needed to illuminate the mechanisms underlying the experience of the present moment. The study of meditative states, describable as changes in the present moment experience, remains a promising approach.
... While the effects of meditation practice on cognitive processes, such as memory (Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010;van Vugt & Jha, 2011) and attention (Hodgins & Adair, 2010;Jha et al., 2007;Lutz et al., 2009), have been widely investigated, only a few studies have looked at the effect of meditation on perception of time (Ataria, Dor-Ziderman, & Berkovich-Ohana, 2015;Berkovich-Ohana, Glicksohn, & Goldstein, 2011;Droit-Volet, Chaulet, & Dambrun, 2018;Droit-Volet, Fanget, & Dambrun, 2015;Kramer, Weger, & Sharma, 2013;Schotz et al., 2016;Thones & Wittmann, 2016;Wittmann et al., 2015;Wittmann & Schmidt, 2014). These include studies on the phenomenology of temporal experience (Ataria et al., 2015;Berkovich-Ohana, Dor-Ziderman, Glicksohn, & Goldstein, 2013) and time perception measured using psychophysical tasks (Schotz et al., 2016;Wittmann et al., 2015). ...
... While the effects of meditation practice on cognitive processes, such as memory (Jha, Stanley, Kiyonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010;van Vugt & Jha, 2011) and attention (Hodgins & Adair, 2010;Jha et al., 2007;Lutz et al., 2009), have been widely investigated, only a few studies have looked at the effect of meditation on perception of time (Ataria, Dor-Ziderman, & Berkovich-Ohana, 2015;Berkovich-Ohana, Glicksohn, & Goldstein, 2011;Droit-Volet, Chaulet, & Dambrun, 2018;Droit-Volet, Fanget, & Dambrun, 2015;Kramer, Weger, & Sharma, 2013;Schotz et al., 2016;Thones & Wittmann, 2016;Wittmann et al., 2015;Wittmann & Schmidt, 2014). These include studies on the phenomenology of temporal experience (Ataria et al., 2015;Berkovich-Ohana, Dor-Ziderman, Glicksohn, & Goldstein, 2013) and time perception measured using psychophysical tasks (Schotz et al., 2016;Wittmann et al., 2015). In terms of phenomenology, Ataria et al. (2015) studied sense of boundaries for multiple aspects, including the sense of time, with an advanced meditation expert who moved through three different stages, namely the default state, dissolving of the sense of boundaries, and disappearance of the sense of boundaries. ...
... They showed that meditators reported slowing of time in subjective-scale-based measures but did not show any difference compared to non-meditators in the psychophysical tasks. In contrast, another study (Schotz et al., 2016) comparing 20 experienced transcendental meditators with non-meditators on a set of psychophysical tasks, such as duration reproduction and time estimation, found that transcendental meditators were more precise. ...
... People who regularly practice mindfulness meditation do indeed report some changes in their relationship to the passage of time, which they experience as being slowed (Kabat-Zinn 2003). However, few experimental studies have actively examined the impacts of meditation on the different forms of time judgment and the processes that underlie these (Block 1979;Schötz et al. 2015;Wittmann et al. 2015). ...
... Two recent experimental studies have examined the feeling of the passage of time in current practitioners of meditation by asking a series of questions relating to the present or the past, e.g., BHow fast has time passed for you this last week/during the last 10 years?^Wittmann et al. (2015) confirmed a decrease in the perceived rate of the passage of time for the present (week, month), but not for the past (last year, last 10 years), in meditators compared to controls without meditation experience. Schötz et al. (2015) did not replicate these results. However, this could be due to the meditation technique practiced by the participants in this latter study (transcendental meditation), which was different from the mindfulness technique used in the former. ...
The first aim of this study was to examine the differences in time judgments between meditators, who already possessed mindfulness-oriented meditation experience, and control subjects. The second was to examine the immediate effect of a long mindfulness meditation session (30 min) on the judgment of short stimulus durations (from 0.8 to 2.0 s). In addition, individual characteristics in terms of cognitive, affective (anxiety, arousal), and mindful awareness were assessed to investigate the relations between time judgments and individual states. The results showed no difference between the meditators and the controls on the different types of time judgment. The regular practice of meditation therefore did not change the judgment of passage of time or the judgment of short durations. However, the participants with a higher level of mindfulness awareness experienced a slowing down of the passage of time. In addition, the immediate effect of the mindfulness meditation session was to reduce the variability of temporal judgment in all participants. This improvement was linked, at least for the longest duration (2.0 s), to the decrease in anxiety and arousal levels as a result of the mindfulness session.
... shown that mindfulness meditation modifies one's experience of time (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2012;Droit-Volet et al., 2015;Kramer et al., 2013;Schötz et al., 2016;Wittmann et al., 2015). In a study, individuals trained in meditation, who possessed higher levels of mindfulness trait underestimated time for small interval durations and overestimated for long interval durations . ...
Mindfulness and flow are two optimal, therapeutic and productive states of consciousness that have recently gained a lot of attention in various fields such as clinical, cognitive science, psychology, sports, music, human-computer interaction, etc. There is an ongoing discussion about the similarities and differences between these two states, and numerous studies have appeared comparing the two based on various parameters such as present awareness and the type of self that both seek to promote. Research on integrating mindfulness to influence the flow phenomenon has proven to be a promising field, but there is little knowledge about the relationship between these two states in general and in a musical context in particular. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the constructs of mindfulness and the dimensions of flow during the process of playing a musical instrument. Playing a musical instrument is one of the most important areas for entering the flow state, and research on the relevance of mindfulness during the flow phenomenon in a musical context is still in its infancy. This work is divided into two main studies. The first study aims to investigate whether the dispositional trait of mindfulness has a predictive relationship with different dimensions of flow. Such an investigation should understand the nature of optimal experiences of mindfulness and flow and try to elucidate the issues related to their coexistence and interdependence. The second study was a qualitative study aimed at observing the changes in the lived experience of flow by changing mindfulness levels in musicians. A one-month musical induction program was planned with two music students and two musicians.
Mindfulness and flow are two optimal, therapeutic and productive states of consciousness that have recently gained a great deal of attention in various fields such as clinical, cognitive science, psychology, sports, music, human-computer interaction, etc. There is an ongoing discussion about the similarities and differences between these two states, and numerous studies have appeared comparing the two based on various parameters such as present awareness and the type of self that both seek to promote. Research on integrating mindfulness to influence the flow phenomenon has proven to be a promising field, but there is little knowledge about the relationship between these two states in general and in a musical context in particular. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between the constructs of mindfulness and the dimensions of flow during the process of playing a musical instrument. Playing a musical instrument is one of the most important areas for entering the flow state, and research on the relevance of mindfulness during the flow phenomenon in a musical context is still in its infancy. This work is divided into two main studies. The first study aims to investigate whether the dispositional trait of mindfulness has a predictive relationship with different dimensions of flow. Such an investigation should understand the nature of optimal experiences of mindfulness and flow and try to elucidate the issues related to their coexistence and interdependence. The second study was a qualitative study aimed at observing the changes in the lived experience of flow by changing mindfulness levels in musicians. A one-month musical induction program was planned with two music students and two musicians. In summary, the results of the experiments presented in this thesis provide a preliminary understanding of how mindfulness is related to various dimensions of flow and how a mindfulness training program has an ability to influence flow in musical instrument playing context. This thesis contributes to the literature at a conceptual level by identifying which constructs of mindfulness that have a greater influence on different dimensions of flow as well as outlining relevant mindfulness-based intervention techniques.
... Communication-focused therapies have also been proposed to increase parent-child synchrony (Green et al., 2010) in children with autism. Moreover, mindfulness meditation has been associated with faster felt passage of time and increased precision of temporal representations (Droit-Volet et al., 2019Schötz et al., 2016;Thönes and Wittmann, 2016), which suggest it could be promoted in a variety of clinical situations. Finally, music could entrain and enhance brain rhythms of time processing (Lakatos et al., 2019). ...
A central question in understanding cognition and pathology-related cognitive changes is how we process time.
However, time processing difficulties across several neurological and psychiatric conditions remain seldom
investigated. The aim of this review is to develop a unifying taxonomy of time processing, and a neuropsychological perspective on temporal difficulties. Four main temporal judgments are discussed: duration processing, simultaneity and synchrony, passage of time, and mental time travel. We present an integrated
theoretical framework of timing difficulties across psychiatric and neurological conditions based on selected
patient populations. This framework provides new mechanistic insights on both (a) the processes involved in
each temporal judgement, and (b) temporal difficulties across pathologies. By identifying underlying transdiagnostic time-processing mechanisms, this framework opens fruitful avenues for future research.
... However, whilst many studies demonstrate that MM shortens perceived time, shortening effects are not universally reported. Comparisons of experienced mindfulness meditators with novices often fail to report differences in their timing ability (Droit-Volet & Heros, 2017;Otten et al., 2015;Schötz et al., 2016;Wittmann et al., 2015). Furthermore, some studies have also observed longer perceptions of duration following MM than a control activity when judging shorter (Kramer et al., 2013) and longer stimulus durations (Droit-Volet et al., 2019). ...
Non-drug therapies for pain treatment are becoming increasingly popular. In particular, Mindfulness Meditation (MM) interventions have been found to be effective at reducing the perceived intensity of pain. However, the extent to which MM alters other elements of pain experience (e.g. perceived duration of pain) remains unclear. The current study therefore investigated the effect MM on the temporal dimension of pain by establishing whether MM could reduce its perceived duration. In a two-session experiment, participants were asked to verbally estimate the duration of a series of painful electro-cutaneous, non-painful tactile and neutral visual stimulations before and after practicing a 1-week MM (or control) intervention. Contrary to expectations, the results did not show evidence that MM is effective in reducing the perceived duration of experimental pain. The effects of MM on pain experience do not therefore appear to extend to pain’s temporal dimension.
https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/P9MR28WMTFG6ICWXNAQP/full?target=10.1080/20445911.2022.2154780
... Viele Sterbende wollen darum, dass man schnellstmöglich noch eine wichtige Person anruft und einbestellt, oder aber gerade dass man manche Menschen nicht mehr ins Zimmer lässt (Gruber et al. 2000 (Wittmann 2015;Wittmann und Schmidt 2014). In zwei eigenen Studien mit Meditierenden unterschiedlicher Traditionen konnten wir auch empirisch zeigen, dass für Meditierende im Vergleich zu Kontrollpersonen die Zeit im Alltag subjektiv langsamer vergeht, ausgedehnter empfunden wird und weniger Zeitdruck besteht (Schötz et al. 2016;. ...
... 246), which describes OM practice. In the other study (Schötz et al., 2016), experienced practitioners of transcendental meditation were compared to matched controls. The main transcendental meditation practice is some form of Mantra meditation, which, at least in the initial stage, can be considered more an FA than an OM technique. ...
Studies that examined the impact of meditation on the subjective perception of time have produced contradictory results. Sometimes time seems to expand for meditators, other times to shorten. Previous explanations used (different) current theories of timing to explain these results. In contrast, we propose a theoretical account that starts with a model of meditation derived from early Buddhism and augment it with current theories of time perception. This augmented Buddhist model of meditation (ABMM) predicts that the felt time spent in meditation depends crucially on the kind of meditation technique: Time should in retrospect feel shorter when meditators continuously focus their attention on a given object of meditation than when they have their attention openly monitoring ever-changing perceptions, cognitions, and emotions. However, the length and accuracy of time estimates should not be noticeably influenced by the kind of meditation, and whether meditators are informed about an upcoming timing task beforehand should affect only beginners and not advanced meditators. First, we use the ABMM to reexamine the seemingly contradictory results from previous research and then report on the first study that directly tested the model. Both the results of previous research and the findings of the current study are largely consistent with the predictions derived from the ABMM.
... Viele Sterbende wollen darum, dass man schnellstmöglich noch eine wichtige Person anruft und einbestellt, oder aber gerade dass man manche Menschen nicht mehr ins Zimmer lässt (Gruber et al. 2000 (Wittmann 2015;Wittmann und Schmidt 2014). In zwei eigenen Studien mit Meditierenden unterschiedlicher Traditionen konnten wir auch empirisch zeigen, dass für Meditierende im Vergleich zu Kontrollpersonen die Zeit im Alltag subjektiv langsamer vergeht, ausgedehnter empfunden wird und weniger Zeitdruck besteht (Schötz et al. 2016;. ...
Do people who are diagnosed with cancer with good chances of recovery still feel close to death? And what does the confrontation with the finitude of life mean for the design of the living environments of these people? The researchers present here parts of the results of their study ‘Perception of time in subjective proximity to death’ and prove perception changes of people with a cancer diagnosis which occur independently of the actual, medical severity of their illness.
... In most of the studies in Table 16, the subject assignment to groups was random except when organizational constraints made it impossible or subjects were long-term meditators. For instance, [75] reported an experiment carried out with 20 experienced meditators and 20 matched controls without any meditation experience. ...
italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Context
. Mindfulness is a meditation technique whose main goal is keeping the mind calm and educating attention by focusing only on one thing at a time, usually breathing. The reported benefits of its continued practice can be of interest for Software Engineering students and practitioners, especially in tasks like conceptual modeling, in which concentration and clearness of mind are crucial.
Goal
. In order to evaluate whether Software Engineering students enhance their conceptual modeling performance after several weeks of mindfulness practice, a series of three controlled experiments were carried out at the University of Seville during three consecutive academic years (2013–2016) involving 130 students.
Method
. In all the experiments, the subjects were divided into two groups. While the experimental group practiced mindfulness, the control group was trained in public speaking as a placebo treatment. All the subjects developed two conceptual models based on a transcript of an interview, one before and another one after the treatment. The results were compared in terms of conceptual modeling quality (measured as effectiveness, i.e., the percentage of model elements correctly identified) and productivity (measured as efficiency, i.e., the number of model elements correctly identified per unit of time).
Results
. The statistically significant results of the series of experiments revealed that the subjects who practiced mindfulness developed slightly better conceptual models (their quality was 8.16 percent higher) and they did it faster (they were 46.67 percent more productive) than the control group, even if they did not have a previous interest in meditation.
Conclusions
. The practice of mindfulness improves the performance of Software Engineering students in conceptual modeling, especially their productivity. Nevertheless, more experimentation is needed in order to confirm the outcomes in other Software Engineering tasks and populations.
... These findings are corroborated by a study with students, where more mindful individuals relatively perceived duration in the minutes' range to last longer (Weiner et al., 2016). Furthermore, a group of experienced meditators of transcendental meditation practice, who had higher self-reported levels of mindfulness, were more accurate than control subjects without experience in meditation in perceiving stimuli with duration in the milliseconds range (Schötz et al., 2016). Another study looked at time perception performance and correlates of brain activation (EEG) and found a decrease of gamma power in midline structures and relatively longer produced temporal intervals in experienced meditators as compared to controls (Berkovich-Ohana, Glicksohn, & Goldstein, 2012). ...
Subjective time emerges through the existence of the self across time as an enduring and embodied entity. This relation is prominently disclosed in studies on altered states of consciousness such as in meditative states but also in everyday states of consciousness such as transiently being in states of boredom or flow. Mindfulness meditation, as the most frequently studied meditation technique in the West, stems from the Buddhist Theravada tradition, practiced traditionally as Vipassanā meditation and conceptualized in Western and secular contexts. Empirical research on meditation practice reveals quantitatively measured changes in the senses of self and time. Being mindful in everyday life is equivalent to being conscious of one's body states and feelings at a particular moment in time. Because the feeling of time is created through the embodied self, being mindful slows down the passage of time and it expands present moment awareness. A peak experience as reached in meditation states by experienced meditators can occur as culminating in 'selflessness' and 'timelessness'-a reported universal spiritual experience where time is not experienced at all and the self becomes one with the world.
... In contrast, Weiner et al. (2016) found individuals higher in trait mindfulness experienced time as passing faster than individuals lower in mindfulness. Additional research has linked greater mindfulness with more precise perceptions of time (Droit-Volet et al. 2015;Kramer et al. 2013;Schötz et al. 2016). ...
Objectives
Despite mindfulness being defined as a present-focused awareness of one’s moment-to-moment experiences, there has been little research investigating its relation to temporal perspective in terms of individual’s thoughts and feelings concerning their past, present, and future lives.
Methods
The current study employed an online sample of 305 American adults (M age = 30.61, SD = 3.42; 55% female) to examine a five-factor model of mindfulness in relation to multiple components of temporal perspective: evaluation, focus, distance, overlap, and value of one’s recollected past, present, and anticipated future lives.
Results
Mindfulness factors were associated with aspects of temporal perspective encompassing all three temporal periods—including greater focus on the present, more positive evaluations of the present and future, and greater valuing of the present. Furthermore, a canonical correlation analysis (Wilk’s λ = 0.39, p < 0.001) identified two unique combinations of mindfulness, each linked with different aspects of temporal perspective (rs = 0.63 and 0.43; ps < 0.05). First, a mixture of greater awareness, nonjudgment, and describing was linked with greater focus on one’s present life and more positive evaluations of one’s past, present, and future lives. Second, a combination of greater nonreacting, observing, and describing was linked with greater focus on one’s past, present, and future lives.
Conclusions
Findings suggest that there is much to be gained by investigating mindfulness using a temporally expanded approach. Mindfulness is more than just a present-oriented construct but rather is linked in various ways with how individuals view their past, present, and future lives.
... Meissner and Wittmann (2011) found a significant correlation between accuracy in time reproduction and individual abilities to feel a bodily signal (one's own heartbeat). However, their results have not been replicated in other studies, or at least not for all stimulus durations (Schötz et al., 2015;Pollatos, Laubrock, & Wittmann, 2014). Cellini, Mioni, Levorato, Grondin, and Stablum (2015) have nevertheless shown that participants with a higher heart rate variability are less variable in their time estimates (higher time sensitivity). ...
Psychological time is complex. Time seems to exist as a reality independent of us, as a physical feature of an objective world that we are able to measure with a specific mechanism, which researchers call “internal clock”. However, numerous studies have shown how easily our time estimates can be distorted by our emotions. Under the influence of emotion, time often seems to speed up or slow down. Time is thus also a pure product of our emotions and of the upheavals they produce in our bodies and minds. This is the paradox identified by Droit-Volet and Gil: why are our time estimates so variable if we possess a sophisticated mechanism for measuring time? The aim of this chapter is to present the recent studies on emotion and time perception and passage of time awareness, and investigate how they question the models of internal clock.
... A substantial amount of research has also investigated the long-term effects of MMTs and MBIs on basic psychological functions and processes, such as executive functions [8], attention regulation, cognitive flexibility [9], bistable imagery [10], and time perception [11][12][13][14][15][16]. An interesting research branch has begun focusing on the short-term effects of meditation MMTs and MBISs and underlying trait characteristics. ...
(1) Background: Mind-body interventions (MBI), such as meditation or other relaxation techniques, have become the focus of attention in the clinical and health sciences. Differences in the effects of induction techniques are being increasingly investigated. (2) Methods: Here, we compared changes in the individual experience of time, space, and self in 44 students in an integrative health-promotion program. They participated in a study employing mindfulness meditation and a relaxation intervention with one week between sessions, thus employing a within-subjects design. (3) Results: No significant differences were detected when subjective reports were compared directly after each intervention. However, we found significant sequence effects between t1 and t2, independent of the meditation type. The sense of self diminished, the present orientation increased, and the past and future orientations decreased in both interventions. (4) Conclusions: We propose using scales to assess subjective time, self, and space as basic constituents of experience to measure the specificity of intervention methods, as well as longitudinal changes.
... change. Mindfulness emphasizes awareness and acceptance, focuses on the present experience, and is a "being mode of mind" (Brown and Ryan, 2003;Williams, 2010;Dorjee, 2016), which can change individuals' time experience, time consciousness, and time perception Wittmann et al., 2015;Schötz et al., 2016), and thus influence BTP. Finally, the direct effect of mindfulness on BTP also suggests that mindfulness may enhance BTP through other paths. ...
Balanced time perspective is associated with optimal social functioning and provides psychological benefits in times of stress. Previous studies have found that mindfulness is positively associated with balanced time perspective and might promote it. However, the mechanism through which mindfulness affects balanced time perspective remains unexplored. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the mediating role of self-compassion and subjective well-being in the relationship between mindfulness and balanced time perspective. A total of 754 Chinese college students, aged 17–27 years, completed the Chinese versions of the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire, Self-Compassion Scale, Subjective Well-Being Scale, and Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory. There were significant positive correlations between mindfulness, self-compassion, subjective well-being, and balanced time perspective. Structural equation modeling indicated that in addition to the direct influence of mindfulness on balanced time perspective, self-compassion and subjective well-being played a partial mediating role. On the basis of these findings, we conclude that mindfulness has an important positive influence on balanced time perspective, and highlights the crucial role of the self-compassion in cultivating a balanced time perspective. Limitations of the present study are also discussed.
... Los cinco meditadores zen entrevistados, muestran una percepción de diferencia entre el tiempo reloj y la vivencia interna del tiempo, percibiendo el transcurso del tiempo con lentitud y considerándolo como sustancial. Lo anterior, es concordante con la investigación científica revisada, en donde se ha sustentado que la práctica meditativa afecta la experiencia subjetiva del tiempo (Wittman & Schmidt, 2014) y aumenta la sensibilidad de la percepción temporal (Dambrun et al., 2015), percibiéndose una dilatación del paso del tiempo y un cambio en la percepción del presente (Berkovich-Ohana et al., 2011), concibiéndolo como enlentecido (Kohls et al., 2016;Kramer, Sharma, & Weger, 2013). ...
En la meditación zen, un componente importante de la práctica es el fenómeno de la conciencia del momento presente. Presencia puede ser entendida como una experiencia de conciencia encarnada en el aquí y ahora. Sobre este objeto de estudio, la investigación ha hecho un abordaje empírico con énfasis en la tercera persona, en desmedro de su estudio subjetivo. El principal objetivo de esta investigación es estudiar la experiencia de presencia en meditadores zen durante la práctica meditativa. Se utilizó el método de entrevista micro-fenomenológica para recopilar información sobre la experiencia subjetiva de presencia en meditadores. Para analizar los datos, se aplicó el método de fenomenología trascendental de Moustakas, lo que permitió encontrar la estructura invariante del fenómeno de estudio. Esta investigación encontró que la esencia de la experiencia de presencia de los meditadores zen se caracteriza por la sensación de mantener un contacto puro con la realidad, que origina un cambio en la percepción del sí mismo, los otros y el mundo circundante. Finalmente, se discute que los resultados permiten concebir la meditación como una experiencia subjetiva de carácter corporizado y de ser-en-el-mundo, elementos que están abiertos al contexto intersubjetivo. Esta perspectiva abre una interpretación de la meditación bajo un enfoque encarnado y relacional.
... Meissner and Wittmann (2011) revealed a significant correlation between accuracy in time reproduction and the individual ability to feel a bodily signal (one's own heartbeat). However, this result has not been replicated in other studies (Schötz et al., 2015). ...
For decades, researchers in the behavioral sciences have studied how humans judge time accurately. Now they are looking more closely at the conditions in which they fail to do so and why, with the aim of testing the limits of a potential internal timing system (i.e., an internal clock). Recent behavioral studies have thus focused on time distortions, in particular those caused by emotion. They have also begun to examine the awareness of the passage of time and its relation with the perception of durations in different temporal ranges, from a few seconds to several minutes.
... One must differentiate between an impulsive present orientation and presentmindedness as developed and cultivated, for example, through introspective training, such as meditation (Campos et al., 2016;Sch€ otz et al., 2016;Wittmann and Schmidt, 2014). The former is associated with a strong urge to act at the present moment and is stimulus-oriented, whereas the latter is associated with an observational state related to more self-control (Short et al., 2016;. ...
With our attitudes and behavior, which aim at promoting sustainable behavior, we face a temporal dilemma – a temporal conflict between short-term and long-term interests. Accordingly, psychological time is an essential variable in understanding how people decide between options of short-term self-interest, which can be experienced at present, and long-term common interest, such as sustainable development with an outcome that lies far in the future. Present feelings are often so powerful that considerations of future events are neglected. Individuals differ in their emphasis on present and future dimensions. A stronger future orientation and a mindful present orientation are positive predictors of sustainable behavior; hedonistic and impulsive present orientations are negative predictors. We discuss the concept of the balanced time perspective as the propensity to consciously switch among the time orientations of past, present, and future. Fitting with their overall psychological profile, individuals with a balanced time perspective might display a range of sustainable attitudes and behaviors.
... In later studies, control participants as well as experienced meditators showed a relative time expansion for stimuli in the millisecond-to-second range directly after a mindfulness meditation session (Droit-Volet et al., 2015;Kramer, Weger, & Sharma, 2013). Recent cross-sectional studies comparing experienced meditators with meditation-naive controls in the ability to judge duration showed how subjective time in everyday experience is slowed in mindfulness meditators ( Wittmann et al., 2015) while the accuracy in time perception is increased in Transcendental Meditation practitioners ( Schötz et al., 2015). ...
Time production (TP) with or without chronometric counting both instantiates and reflects the working of an internal clock, as originally posited by Treisman. We exploit the fact that a number of experienced meditators, who had previously participated in a study wherein TP was assessed, and who had employed chronometric counting then, would be coming back to the lab to participate in a second study. We specifically requested that they should not employ chronometric counting this time, thus allowing us to contrast TP with and without counting. We report a qualitative difference between TP implemented by counting and TP without counting: The first is a linear function of target duration (T), while the second is not, and entails a discontinuity in the function. Requesting meditators not to engage in chronometric counting, and thereby forcing them to rely instead on other cues (sensory, bodily, etc.), might well be an appropriate context in which to observe such a discontinuity in TP.
... transcendental meditation, mindfulness, etc. We have recently shown, for instance, that individuals with practice in mindfulness and transcendental meditation differ in their ability to perceive time from individuals who lack meditative practice (Schötz et al. 2016;Wittmann et al. 2015;Sauer et al. 2012). Hence, future studies could take this finding into account to clarify the specific role that the different components of a spiritual practice play in the occurrence of exceptional experiences. ...
The present study aims to analyse the association that different types of spiritual and religious practices have with the occurrence of Exceptional Human Experiences (EHEs) as well as their emotional evaluation. We analysed the relation that meditation, prayer, and ‘other’ spiritual practices, or the lack of them, have with the occurrence of EHEs, which were measured employing the Exceptional Experiences Questionnaire (EEQ). Samples were recruited at psychology departments in the UK and USA. They consisted of n = 301 non-clinical participants, of whom n = 156 were from Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA (average age = 32.3, SD = 13.7); and n = 145 from Northampton, UK (average age = 25.2, SD = 9.8). Results suggest that people who pray experienced fewer experiences of deconstruction/ego loss, psychopathological and visionary dream experiences than other spiritual practice groups. Those who pray also reported more positive mystical experiences than non-practising individuals; whereas individuals with a regular meditative practice experienced more visionary dream experiences, and evaluated such experiences more positively, than those who pray and non- practising individuals. Results suggest that different spiritual and religious techniques are associated with different phenomenological end evaluative patterns of EHEs that can be differentiated from psychopathological experiences.
... Three of the studies were published online in 2015 and appeared in print in 2016. We have cited the print versions (Iqbal et al. 2016;Schötz et al. 2016;Shearer et al. 2016). ...
In recent years, interest in the effects of meditation has increased considerably, which might have had an impact on the outcomes as well as on the methods used. The present meta-analysis summarizes the effects of meditation for healthy practitioners for the years 2011 to 2015, thereby complementing a previous summary that covered the four decades before. We found a global effect size for studies with conventional controls of = .27 (n = 54), comparable to the earlier analysis, as well as a smaller but apparently stable effect of = .17 when meditation groups were compared to active controls (n = 16 studies). As in the previous summary, results were strongest for relationship issues and relatively strong for measures of intelligence and the self-concept, but effects were markedly smaller for negative emotions and anxiety. Also, in contrast to the previous analysis, meditation experience and length of meditation training correlated positively with the strength of meditation effects. Unfortunately, most studies still appear to have been conducted without sufficient theoretical background, and dependent measures seem largely to have been chosen ad hoc. We emphasize that meditation research will only make real progress if more effort is spent on developing precise theories and measurement devices.
... In further studies, meditationnaïve as well as meditation-experienced individuals showed a relative time expansion for stimuli in the milliseconds-to-seconds range directly after a mindfulness meditation session (Droit-Volet, Fanget and Dambrun, 2015;Kramer, Weger and Sharma, 2013). Recent cross-sectional studies comparing experienced meditators with meditation-naïve controls in the ability to judge duration showed how subjective time in everyday experience ('trait mindfulness') is slowed in mindfulness meditators (Wittmann et al., 2015) and the accuracy in time perception is increased in TM practitioners (Schötz et al., 2015). Being mindful in everyday life is the equivalent of being conscious of one's body states and feelings, of oneself at a particular moment in time. ...
One of the biggest challenges for researchers investigating altered states of consciousness (ASCs) has been the need for a systematic framework to accurately describe the phenomenological characteristics of ASCs, as well as placing them in relation to regular states of consciousness. Here, we target these two challenges by employing a new and systematic model of consciousness, the consciousness state space (CSS), and presenting a typology of ASCs within the CSS model. Specifically, the CSS model describes two different levels of self, narrative and minimal, as concentric spheres along three dimensions — subjective time, awareness, and emotion — and creates a phenomenological state-space encompassing all possible states, with its proposed neural space. We describe several ASCs focusing on dreaming, hallucinogenic effects of drugs, and meditation, in order to demonstrate and draw several conclusions. Here we focus on two related alterations during ASCs pertaining to perception of time and the bodily self: (i) ASCs share a common ‘collapse’ of the time dimension towards a transitory state of ‘timelessness’; (ii) during extreme ASCs, body sensations are ‘cut-off’ or at least distorted.
... Similarly, Wittmann (2015) argued that decreased awareness of the self is associated with diminished awareness of time. The practice of meditation also alters time sensitivity (Droit-Volet, Fanget, & Dambrun, 2015;Schötz et al., 2015). It has been proposed that both timelessness and spacelessness are markers of mysticism (Francis & Louden, 2000;Hood, 1975), and that they are more pronounced among meditators than non-meditators (Berkovich-Ohana & Glicksohn, 2016), as well as being more pronounced in transient selflessness induced through holotropic breathing (Puente, 2014) or psilocybin administration (Griffiths et al., 2011). ...
In 2002, Fan and his colleagues developed the Attention Network Test (ANT), a cognitive tool that provides a score for each of the attentional networks (alerting, orienting, and executive functioning). Since publication, this study has been cited over 3,500 times. The authors state one of the indicated uses of this tool is to measure how different interventions, both behavioural and pharmacological, influence the networks of attention. The present review focuses on this premise and investigating how various aspects of lifestyle differently impact the networks of attention. Whether trying to optimize the attentional networks to improve cognitive performance, or to prevent the cognitive decline that occurs with age, this review summarizes what practices promote efficiency within the alerting, orienting, and executive functioning networks. The specific areas of lifestyle this review focuses on are meditation, exercise, drug use, sleep, and environmental or social factors.
This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
A paucity of data in school children generally, and in non-Western schools specifically, related to health, school performance, and practice of meditation necessitated this study. The fact that almost no prior research of this type has been conducted in Latin America makes the present investigation especially worthwhile. This mostly quantitative study was carried out with 91 randomly selected school children, ranging in age from 11 to 16 years, in a remote Peruvian town in the central Andean mountains called Huay-Huay. Using a 47-question, paper-and-pencil instrument to ask students about their experience with meditation in four categories (i.e., physical health, cognitive health, emotional health, and school performance), this observational study considered whether or not the practice of meditation had a self-reported impact on student personal health and academic life, and if so to what extent. Data indicate that a majority of children in Huay-Huay reported benefits across all measures, and these were apparently stronger when students practiced meditation more regularly. Qualitative reports support these conclusions. Gender and grade level did not appear to influence this outcome.
DER VOLLSTÄNDIGE TEXT IST IN DEUTSCH NICHT MEHR VERFÜGBAR UND WIRD BALD ALS BUCH BEI ASANGER PUBLIZIERT - ABSTRACT - Der Text gibt einen kurzen Überblick über einige historische, traditionelle vedische bzw. buddhistische Hintergründe der Transzendentalen Meditation (TM) und der Achtsamkeitsmeditation (Anapanasati). Es wird ein breiter Überblick über die bisherige Forschung zu beiden Meditationsformen gegeben. Abschließend wird ein objektiver Vergleich der Effekte beider Techniken, sowohl kurz- (vor der Meditationspraxis versus danach) als auch langfristig (mit einem Abstand von einigen Monaten), anhand der Messung der Herzfrequenz-Variabilität (HRV) vorgestellt. Die HRV wurde bei jedem Probanden mehrmals gemessen, wiederum mit kurzfristigen Standard- (5 Minuten) und Langzeitmessungen (25 Minuten) während der Meditation. Ein weiterer Vergleich der beiden spezifischen meditationstypischen Ergebnisse mit verwandten HRV-Typologien aus anderen klinischen und persönlichkeitspsychologischen Messungen wurde hinzugefügt, um eine Art grobe, aber empirisch fundierte ungefähre charakteristische Typologie ("Persönlichkeit") für beide Meditationsformen zu erhalten.
- Publication as a book by Asanger Verlag in preparation -
Abstract -
The text reviews shortly some historical traditional vedic resp. buddhistic backgrounds of transcendental meditation (TM) and mindfulness meditation (anapanasati). A broad overview of previous research on both forms of meditation is given. Finally an objective comparison of the effects of both techniques, both short (before meditation practice versus afterwards) and long term (with an interval of some months), is presented using the measurement of heart-rate-variability (HRV). HRV was measured several times with each subject, again using short term standard (5 Minutes) and long term (25 Minutes) measurements during meditation. A further comparison of the two specific meditation-typical results with related HRV typologies from other clinical and personality psychological measurements was added to yield some sort of a rough but empirically founded approximate characteristic typology ("personality") for both meditation forms.
Attention is a central component of cognitive and behavioral processes and plays a key role in basic and higher-level functioning. Posner’s model of attention describes three components or networks of attention: the alerting, which involves high intensity states of arousal; the orienting, which involves the selective direction of attention; and the executive control, which involves cognitive functions such as conflict resolution and working memory. The Attention Network Test (ANT) is a computerized testing measure that was developed to measure these three networks of attention. This project describes the ANT, its widely used variants, and the recently developed ANT Database, a repository of data extracted from all studies that have used the ANT as of 2019. To illustrate the potential uses of the database, two meta-analyses conducted using the ANT Database are described. One explores task performance in children with and without attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The other one explores regional differences between studies conducted in China, Europe, and the United States. We are currently in the process of integrating the database into a publicly available web interface. When that work is complete, researchers, clinicians, and the general public will be able to use the database to explore topics of interest related to attention.
Background:
Two-hundred one college undergraduates completed four nonverbal interference tasks (Simon, spatial Stroop, vertical Stroop, and flanker) and trait scales of self-control and impulsivity. Regression analyses tested 11 predictors of the composite interference scores derived from three of the four tasks and each task separately. The purpose of the study was to examine the relationships between laboratory measures of self-control, self-report measures, and the degree to which control might be related to extensive experience in activities that logically require self-control.
Results:
Fluid intelligence and sex were significant predictors of the composite measure, but bilingualism, music training, video gaming, mindfulness/meditation, self-control, impulsivity, SES, and physical exercise were not.
Conclusions:
Common laboratory measures of inhibitory control do not correlate with self-reported measures of self-control or impulsivity and consequently appear to be measuring different constructs. Bilingualism, mindfulness/meditation, playing action video games, and music training or performance provide weak and inconsistent improvements to laboratory measures of interference control. Flanker, Simon, and spatial Stroop effects should not be used or interpreted as measures of domain-general inhibitory control.
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.
What do humans mean when they say that time passes quickly or slowly? In this manuscript, we tried to respond to this question on the basis of our studies on the judgment of the passage of time and its links with the judgment of physical durations. The awareness of the passage of time when consciousness is altered by meditation is also discussed. A dissociation is then made between the “self-time perspective”, the “self-duration” (internal duration) and the “world-duration” (external duration). A link is also established between the self-time perspective and the “narrative self”, on one hand, and the self-duration and the “minimal self”, on the other hand, that is confirmed in our qualitative analysis of testimonials of four meditators. The awareness of self-duration is thus related to the awareness of the embodied self. When the sense of self is altered and the consciousness of the body is lower, then the subjective experience of internal time changes. However, the mechanisms allowing the disappearance of the self with the feeling to be outside time during meditation remains to be elucidated.
It is common for individuals to move their bodies in time with external cues such as sound or music, a phenomenon known as sensorimotor synchronisation. However, not all time intervals are optimal for synchronisation, with some being too short and some being too long to effectively track and time one's actions to. Moreover, cues often have varying periods meaning individuals must correct their movements to re-synchronise with the new rhythm. The ability to synchronise and re-synchronise thus requires correct time interval tracking. Changes in physiological arousal level have been linked to time perception and a number of investigations into the effect of meditation on time perception have been undertaken. Yet, little is known empirically as to how alterations to systems involved in time tracking affect sensorimotor synchronisation. The primary aim of this study is therefore to investigate how a shift in physiological arousal impacts sensorimotor synchronisation with rhythmically-stable and rhythmically-shifting sounds. To this end, participants performed a finger-tapping synchronisation task after either a breathing intervention or sitting quietly. The breathing intervention used was resonance frequency breathing, which increases heart rate variability and creates a parasympathetic-dominant, relaxed state of being. Circular statistics were used to generate mean phase angles and variability of finger taps relative to the sound onsets while a circular analogue of Hotelling's T2 sample test was used to detect differences in synchronisation between conditions. No differences in synchronisation or re-synchronisation were found between conditions; additionally, physiological arousal and heart rate variability showed no significant correlation with synchronisation and re-synchronisation performance. The findings are discussed in the context of other research into time perception and altered states of consciousness. Recommendations for using resonance frequency breathing as a manipulation in future sensorimotor synchronisation research are given.
This study examined the prospective judgment of interval durations during a mindfulness meditation exercise in comparison with two control exercises involving different degrees of attentional demands and participants who either had or had not been trained to practice mindfulness exercises. The results showed that the interval durations (going from 15 to 60 s) were systematically judged shorter with the different mindfulness exercises (breathing, body scan) than with the control exercises. This underestimation of time was accompanied by the awareness that time seems to pass faster and by a decrease in the level of anxiety. However, the subjective feeling of the passage of time and the anxiety level did not explain time perception during a mindfulness meditation exercise. Further results suggest the critical role of attention in the effects of meditation on time judgments, a finding that is consistent with the idea that time flies during meditation as if time no longer existed.
In this daily diary study, we examined the moderating role of employee domain‐specific mindfulness within the stressor–detachment model (Sonnentag & Fritz, 2015, Journal of Organizational Behavior, 36, 72). According to the stressor–detachment model, emotional and quantitative demands should be associated with decreased psychological detachment after work, which in turn is associated with decreased well‐being (i.e., low positive affect and high negative affect) at bedtime. Moreover, we proposed that both mindfulness at work and home should buffer the relations between job demands and psychological detachment and between psychological detachment and well‐being. Sixty‐five employees completed two daily surveys (i.e., after work and before going to bed) over five workdays. Results of multilevel analyses revealed that job demands did not predict psychological detachment, which in turn did not predict well‐being at bedtime. However, the relation between emotional demands and psychological detachment was buffered by both mindfulness at work and at home while the relation between quantitative demands and psychological detachment was moderated by mindfulness at home only. Moreover, we found that mindfulness at home moderated the relation between psychological detachment and positive affect at bedtime. Our study demonstrates the buffering role of daily mindfulness within the stressor–detachment model and highlights the value of considering domain‐specific mindfulness.
Practitioner points
• Being mindful at work and at home buffers the negative relationships between job demands and psychological detachment after work.
• Promoting mindfulness both in the work and home domain can help employees psychologically detach from work despite high job demands.
According to the cognitive-timer model, time estimation is dependent on the interplay between arousal level and attention. This anticipates that higher attention and lower arousal, two features of meditation, will result in a longer time production (P). We tested this hypothesis by using a time production task in two forms of meditation: Mindfulness Meditation (MM, n = 36) and Transcendental Meditation (TM, n = 10), with suitable age-matched controls (n = 12 and n = 9, respectively). The MM group was comprised of three groups (n = 12 each) with varying expertise level, to enable studying a meditation proficiency effect. We tested trait and state effects by using a pre – post meditation design. All three MM groups exhibited longer P compared to their control, as predicted. This was found to be a trait effect, as condition or MM expertise did not affect the results. No significant changes in P were found following prolonged TM practice.
A large number of competing models exist for how the brain creates a representation of time. However, several human and animal studies point to 'climbing neural activation' as a potential neural mechanism for the representation of duration. Neurophysiological recordings in animals have revealed how climbing neural activation that peaks at the end of a timed interval underlies the processing of duration, and, in humans, climbing neural activity in the insular cortex, which is associated with feeling states of the body and emotions, may be related to the cumulative representation of time.
Experienced meditators typically report that they experience time slowing down in meditation practice as well as in everyday life. Conceptually this phenomenon may be understood through functional states of mindfulness, i.e., by attention regulation, body awareness, emotion regulation, and enhanced memory. However, hardly any systematic empirical work exists regarding the experience of time in meditators. In the current cross-sectional study, we investigated whether 42 experienced mindfulness meditation practitioners (with on average 10 years of experience) showed differences in the experience of time as compared to 42 controls without any meditation experience matched for age, sex, and education. The perception of time was assessed with a battery of psychophysical tasks assessing the accuracy of prospective time judgments in duration discrimination, duration reproduction, and time estimation in the milliseconds to minutes range as well with several psychometric instruments related to subjective time such as the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory, the Barratt Impulsivity Scale and the Freiburg Mindfulness Inventory. In addition, subjective time judgments on the current passage of time and retrospective time ranges were assessed. While subjective judgements of time were found to be significantly different between the two groups on several scales, no differences in duration estimates in the psychophysical tasks were detected. Regarding subjective time, mindfulness meditators experienced less time pressure, more time dilation, and a general slower passage of time. Moreover, they felt that the last week and the last month passed more slowly. Overall, although no intergroup differences in psychophysical tasks were detected, the reported findings demonstrate a close association between mindfulness meditation and the subjective feeling of the passage of time captured by psychometric instruments.
The results of two studies, with 15 and 10 college students practicing the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi program (ages: M = 28 yr.; M = 29 yr.), and 10 and 9 controls (ages: M = 22.9 yr.; M = 26.2 yr.), respectively, indicate that advanced participants of the TM and TM-Sidhi program may have a cognitive set oriented toward more positive values. Subjects in the TM-TM-Sidhi program exhibited a better recall of positively valued words than the control group in a long-term memory task (45 min.), and they needed fewer exposures to recognize positive than negative words at lower absolute thresholds than the controls in a tachistoscopic experiment. They appraised “significant others” more favorably than the control group on LaForge's Interpersonal Checklist, while self-appraisal was high in both groups. A third study of 11 college students, M age of 22.3 yr., yielded an inverse relationship between differential recognition thresholds for positive and negative affect terms on a tachistoscopic task and the reported experienced intensity of the corresponding affects. This suggests that enhanced perception of certain affect terms may be a function of more frequent experiences of those affects.
Background:
Impulsive behavior is an important characteristic in a range of psychiatric disorders. A unanimous definition of impulsivity is still under discussion, but a questionnaire to measure it has been available for quite some time, i.e. the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale Version 11 (BIS11). However, it lacks adequate psychometric characterization for German speakers.
Materials and methods:
Control persons were recruited from the Munich city population. Patients with alcohol dependence, suicide attempts, and borderline personality disorders treated as inpatients at the Munich University Psychiatric Clinic were recruited.
Results:
Confirmatory analysis of the originally suggested factor structure did not adequately represent the data in our sample. The BIS11 sum score, which showed adequate internal consistencies in all subgroups, significantly differentiated the extent of impulsivity between patients and control persons.
Conclusions:
Use of the BIS11 sum score in German-speaking regions can be recommended. This sum score shows adequate internal consistency and well differentiated the extent of impulsivity between different groups of patients with psychiatric diagnoses and control persons.
Many personal reports from experienced meditators exist on how subjective time slows down in meditation practice as well as in everyday life. However, hardly any empirical work exists regarding this exceptional experience. In this theoretical chapter we discuss cognitive and neural models of time perception. We aim at showing how the subjective passage of time and duration are modified by functional states of mindfulness, i.e. by attention regulation, body awareness and emotion regulation. The ability of expert mindfulness meditators to focus more strongly on sensory experiences and to be more strongly aware of feelings and of body states leads to a slowing down of time in the present moment. Moreover, as a consequence of more efficient attention regulation capacities, memory formation is enhanced which in retrospect leads to a subjective lengthening of past duration. Empirical studies concerning time perception in meditation practitioners would help to understand meditative states and at the same time would foster knowledge on cognitive-emotional as well as neural processes underlying the experience of time.
The objective of this correlational study was to investigate how dispositional mindfulness is related to the experience of time as operationalized by the assessment of the time perspectives, impulsiveness, and duration judgment tasks. A sample of students (N = 63) completed self-report measures of mindfulness (FMI, CHIME), the time perspectives (ZTPI), impulsiveness (BIS), conducted psychophysical tasks of (a) auditory duration discrimination in the milliseconds range, (b) visual duration reproduction in the multiple-second range, and performed an attention task, the Attention Network Test. Being more mindful in daily life was related to less impulsiveness, better emotional handling of the past, and a more pronounced future perspective. Mindfulness was also related to more accurate timing in the milliseconds and multiple-seconds range but not to attentional control. These findings suggest a close association between dispositional mindfulness with the temporal organization of behaviour and the perception of time.
The experience of the present moment is characterized by an integrative mechanism that fuses successive events into a unitary phenomenological experience with a temporal limit of about 3 s. We hypothesized that proficiency of mindfulness expands the ability to stabilize an ambiguous percept in a bistable image paradigm using the Necker Cube, and that this effect is associated with individual differences in the level of mindfulness. Expanded duration of nowness as indicated by the ability to stabilize a bistable image stimulus for a longer period of time may improve cognitive resources and thus be of practical interest. In a sample of n = 38 meditators and n = 38 non-meditators, meditators showed longer duration of subjective nowness. This effect was associated with individual mindfulness levels. It is concluded that the subjective now can be longer for meditators than for non-meditators, and individual levels of mindfulness may convey this effect.
It has been proposed that the perception of very short duration is governed by sensory mechanisms, while the perception of longer duration depends on cognitive capacities. Four duration discrimination tasks (modalities: visual, auditory; base duration: 100 ms, 1000 ms) were used to study the relation between time perception, age, sex and cognitive abilities (alertness, visual and verbal working memory, general fluid reasoning) in 100 subjects aged between 21 and 84 years. Temporal acuity was higher (Weber fractions are lower) for longer stimuli and for the auditory modality. Age was related to the visual 100 ms condition only, with lower temporal acuity in elder participants. Alertness was significantly related to auditory and visual Weber fractions for shorter stimuli only. Additionally, visual working memory was a significant predictor for shorter visual stimuli. These results indicate that alertness, but also working memory, are associated with temporal discrimination of very brief duration.
Time perspective (TP), a fundamental dimension in the construction of psychological time, emerges from cognitive processes partitioning human experience into past, present, and future temporal frames. The authors' research program proposes that TP is a pervasive and powerful yet largely unrecognized influence on much human behavior. Although TP variations are learned and modified by a variety of personal, social, and institutional influences, TP also functions as an individual-differences variable. Reported is a new measure assessing personal variations in TP profiles and specific TP "biases." The 5 factors of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory were established through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and demonstrate acceptable internal and test-retest reliability. Convergent, divergent, discriminant, and predictive validity are shown by correlational and experimental research supplemented by case studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Cultivation of mindfulness, the nonjudgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment, produces beneficial effects on well-being and ameliorates psychiatric and stress-related symptoms. Mindfulness meditation has therefore increasingly been incorporated into psychotherapeutic interventions. Although the number of publications in the field has sharply increased over the last two decades, there is a paucity of theoretical reviews that integrate the existing literature into a comprehensive theoretical framework. In this article, we explore several components through which mindfulness meditation exerts its effects: (a) attention regulation, (b) body awareness, (c) emotion regulation (including reappraisal and exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation), and (d) change in perspective on the self. Recent empirical research, including practitioners' self-reports and experimental data, provides evidence supporting these mechanisms. Functional and structural neuroimaging studies have begun to explore the neuroscientific processes underlying these components. Evidence suggests that mindfulness practice is associated with neuroplastic changes in the anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, fronto-limbic network, and default mode network structures. The authors suggest that the mechanisms described here work synergistically, establishing a process of enhanced self-regulation. Differentiating between these components seems useful to guide future basic research and to specifically target areas of development in the treatment of psychological disorders.
© Association for Psychological Science 2011.
The common approach to the multiplicity problem calls for controlling the familywise error rate (FWER). This approach, though, has faults, and we point out a few. A different approach to problems of multiple significance testing is presented. It calls for controlling the expected proportion of falsely rejected hypotheses – the false discovery rate. This error rate is equivalent to the FWER when all hypotheses are true but is smaller otherwise. Therefore, in problems where the control of the false discovery rate rather than that of the FWER is desired, there is potential for a gain in power. A simple sequential Bonferroni-type procedure is proved to control the false discovery rate for independent test statistics, and a simulation study shows that the gain in power is substantial. The use of the new procedure and the appropriateness of the criterion are illustrated with examples.
A model of awareness based on interoceptive salience is described, which has an endogenous time base that might provide a basis for the human capacity to perceive and estimate time intervals in the range of seconds to subseconds. The model posits that the neural substrate for awareness across time is located in the anterior insular cortex, which fits with recent functional imaging evidence relevant to awareness and time perception. The time base in this model is adaptive and emotional, and thus it offers an explanation for some aspects of the subjective nature of time perception. This model does not describe the mechanism of the time base, but it suggests a possible relationship with interoceptive afferent activity, such as heartbeat-related inputs.
We investigated the nature of the relationship between experiences of transcendental consciousness and psychological health. In Study 1, three groups with different levels of experience in transcendental meditation (TM) and in the TM-Sidhi program (techniques that have been shown to produce experiences of transcendental consciousness) were studied, using the self-investigation method of Hermans (1976). We employed blind interviewers and raters with various attitudes toward TM to minimize the possible impact of a variety of artifacts. Cross-sectionally, experience with TM and the TM-Sidhi program was positively related to a general measure of psychological health (p = .002); longitudinally, the meditating groups improved more than the control group on the psychological health measure (p less than .03). In Study 2, two contrast groups of long-term participants were similar on several confounding variables but differed on physiological indicators of experiences of transcendental consciousness. The groups with the positive physiological indicators showed a trend toward higher scores on the psychological health factor (p = .092), indicating that psychological health may be developed through the systematic cultivation of transcendental meditation and the TM-Sidhi program.
Although aggression research in general has been hampered by a lack of objective measurements of aggressive acts, two types of aggressive acts, impulsive vs. premeditated, have been studied extensively in recent years. These two types of aggression have been primarily measured by structured or semi-structured interviews. The current study was designed to assess the construct validity of these two types of aggression using a self-report questionnaire which included items gleaned from the content of interviews used in past studies. For this study, 216 college students assessed their own aggressive acts rather than answering general questions about aggression. The students were not significantly different from normative sample groups on self-report measures of impulsiveness, aggression, and anger/hostility. A PCA factor analysis with a promax rotation of the items on the self-report questionnaire identified four factors: impulsive aggression; mood on the day the act occurred; premeditated aggression; and agitation. Thus, impulsive and premeditated aggression are independent constructs which exist in varying degrees among these 'normal' persons in a non-clinical sample. Impulsive aggression was characterized in part by feelings of remorse following the acts and by thought confusion. Premeditated aggression was related to social gain and dominance.
We provide an updated version of the Compendium of Physical Activities, a coding scheme that classifies specific physical activity (PA) by rate of energy expenditure. It was developed to enhance the comparability of results across studies using self-reports of PA. The Compendium coding scheme links a five-digit code that describes physical activities by major headings (e.g., occupation, transportation, etc.) and specific activities within each major heading with its intensity, defined as the ratio of work metabolic rate to a standard resting metabolic rate (MET). Energy expenditure in MET-minutes, MET-hours, kcal, or kcal per kilogram body weight can be estimated for specific activities by type or MET intensity. Additions to the Compendium were obtained from studies describing daily PA patterns of adults and studies measuring the energy cost of specific physical activities in field settings. The updated version includes two new major headings of volunteer and religious activities, extends the number of specific activities from 477 to 605, and provides updated MET intensity levels for selected activities.
In recent years, three attentional networks have been defined in anatomical and functional terms. These functions involve alerting, orienting, and executive attention. Reaction time measures can be used to quantify the processing efficiency within each of these three networks. The Attention Network Test (ANT) is designed to evaluate alerting, orienting, and executive attention within a single 30-min testing session that can be easily performed by children, patients, and monkeys. A study with 40 normal adult subjects indicates that the ANT produces reliable single subject estimates of alerting, orienting, and executive function, and further suggests that the efficiencies of these three networks are uncorrelated. There are, however, some interactions in which alerting and orienting can modulate the degree of interference from flankers. This procedure may prove to be convenient and useful in evaluating attentional abnormalities associated with cases of brain injury, stroke, schizophrenia, and attention-deficit disorder. The ANT may also serve as an activation task for neuroimaging studies and as a phenotype for the study of the influence of genes on attentional networks.
It is claimed that regular practice of Transcendental Meditation (TM) improves cognitive function and increases intelligence. This systematic review assesses the evidence from randomised controlled trials for cumulative effects of TM on cognitive function. Searches were made of electronic databases and the collected papers and official websites of the TM organisation. Only randomised controlled trials with objective outcome measures of the cumulative effects of TM on cognitive function were included. Trials that measured only acute effects of TM, or used only neurophysiological outcome measures were excluded. 107 articles reporting the effects of TM on cognitive function were identified and 10 met the inclusion criteria. Most were excluded because they used no controls or did not randomize subjects between interventions. Of the 10 trials included, 4 reported large positive effects of TM on cognitive function, four were completely negative, and 2 were largely negative in outcome. All 4 positive trials recruited subjects from among people favourably predisposed towards TM, and used passive control procedures. The other 6 trials recruited subjects with no specific interest in TM, and 5 of them used structured control procedures. The association observed between positive outcome, subject selection procedure and control procedure suggests that the large positive effects reported in 4 trials result from an expectation effect. The claim that TM has a specific and cumulative effect on cognitive function is not supported by the evidence from randomised controlled trials.
Despite the widespread belief that the subjective speed of the passage of time increases with age, empirical results are controversial. In this study, a combination of questionnaires was employed to assess subjective time perception by 499 subjects, ages 14 to 94 years. Pearson correlations and nonlinear regression analyses on a variety of questionnaires and the age of the participants show that the momentary perception of the passage of time and the retrospective judgment of past periods of time are a function of chronological age; however, small-to-moderate effects accounted for at most 10% of the variance. Results generally support the widespread perception that the passage of time speeds up with age. These results are discussed in the context of models of prospective and retrospective time judgment, but interpretations have to be treated with caution given methodological limitations.
Time is an important dimension when individuals make decisions. Specifically, the time until a beneficial outcome can be received is viewed as a cost and is weighed against the benefits of the outcome. We propose that impulsive individuals experience time differently, that is with a higher cost. Impulsive subjects, therefore, overestimate the duration of time intervals and, as a consequence, discount the value of delayed rewards more strongly than do self-controlled individuals. The literature on time perception and impulsivity, however, is not clear cut and needs a better theoretical foundation. Here, we develop the theoretical background on concepts of time perception, which could lead to an empirically based notion of the association between an altered sense of time and impulsivity.
Impulsive behavior is an important characteristic in a range of psychiatric disorders. A unanimous definition of impulsivity is still under discussion, but a questionnaire to measure it has been available for quite some time, i.e. the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale Version 11 (BIS11). However, it lacks adequate psychometric characterization for German speakers.
Control persons were recruited from the Munich city population. Patients with alcohol dependence, suicide attempts, and borderline personality disorders treated as inpatients at the Munich University Psychiatric Clinic were recruited.
Confirmatory analysis of the originally suggested factor structure did not adequately represent the data in our sample. The BIS11 sum score, which showed adequate internal consistencies in all subgroups, significantly differentiated the extent of impulsivity between patients and control persons.
Use of the BIS11 sum score in German-speaking regions can be recommended. This sum score shows adequate internal consistency and well differentiated the extent of impulsivity between different groups of patients with psychiatric diagnoses and control persons.
The common approach to the multiplicity problem calls for controlling the familywise error rate (FWER). This approach, though, has faults, and we point out a few. A different approach to problems of multiple significance testing is presented. It calls for controlling the expected proportion of falsely rejected hypotheses — the false discovery rate. This error rate is equivalent to the FWER when all hypotheses are true but is smaller otherwise. Therefore, in problems where the control of the false discovery rate rather than that of the FWER is desired, there is potential for a gain in power. A simple sequential Bonferronitype procedure is proved to control the false discovery rate for independent test statistics, and a simulation study shows that the gain in power is substantial. The use of the new procedure and the appropriateness of the criterion are illustrated with examples.
The aim of our studies was to design a Metacognitive Questionnaire on Time (MQT) that assesses inter- individual variations in the awareness of factors affecting the experience of the passage of time. In the first study, 532 young adults were asked to reply to an initial questionnaire consisting of 106 questions relating to many different factors (e.g., psychostimulant, body temperature, age, attention) that could affect how time is perceived. Factorial analyses allowed us to extract two discriminant factors, one relating to attention and the other to emotion. The second study sought to validate the final 24-item questionnaire by gathering data from 212 university students. Confirmatory Factorial Analyses (AMOS) showed that the MQT has the same two-factor structure. The third study assessed the construct validity of the MQT by measuring the correlation between the MQT scores and the scores with other questionnaires measuring close or different constructs. In sum, these studies enabled us to develop an easy-to-use questionnaire whereby it is possible to distinguish between individuals according to their subjective feeling of the passage of time. In addition, the participants’ responses on the MQT showed that they were more aware of attention-related factors than of emotion-related factors that might produce time distortions, and that women were more aware of their own temporal distortions than men.
Psychological health has been connected with an integration of a harmonious integration of an individual's self with other individuals, autonomy, creativity, and a unifying philosophy of life. Transcendental meditation has been shown to increase these qualities in individuals and provides an ideal method to connect the theory of psychological health with scientific research.
Timing is essential to the functioning of organisms. Perhaps because the time dimension plays such an important role in human life, the psychology of time was an important topic of early psychological research and theorizing. An examination of the role that time plays in people's lives can focus on various aspects of temporal experience. For example, a researcher can study what makes people judge events to be simultaneous, or judge one event as preceding or following another event. In this article, we focus on the processes that subserve experiences of short duration (ranging from seconds to minutes). Duration timing is essential for representing the immediate external environment. For example, driving or crossing a busy street requires the continual estimation of speed and duration. As people wait in a queue while shopping or receiving a service, feelings of lengthened duration may determine whether they complete the transaction or abandon it. A person using computer software assesses the time required to complete an operation; if this duration seems excessive, the attitude regarding the software will be negative. Because many everyday situations involve duration estimation, it is important to understand the underlying processes.
This two-year longitudinal study investigated the effect of participation in a special university curriculum, whose principal innovative feature is twice-daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi program, on performance on Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) and Hick's reaction time. These measures are known to be correlated with general intelligence. One hundred college men and women were the subjects—45 from Maharishi International University (MIU) and 55 from the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). The experimental group (MIU) improved significantly on the CFIT (t=2.79, P<0.005); choice reaction time (t=9.10, P<0.0001); SD of choice reaction time (t=11.39, P<0.0001), and simple reaction time (t=2.11, P<0.025) over two years compared to the control group, which showed no improvement. Possible confounds of subject's age, education level, level of interest in meditation, father's education level, and father's annual income were controlled for using analysis of covariance and stepwise regression. The results replicate the findings of previous longitudinal studies on intelligence test scores at MIU, and indicate that participation in the MIU curriculum results in improvements in measures related to general intelligence.
Background:
Blacks have disproportionately high rates of cardiovascular disease. Psychosocial stress may contribute to this disparity. Previous trials on stress reduction with the Transcendental Meditation (TM) program have reported improvements in cardiovascular disease risk factors, surrogate end points, and mortality in blacks and other populations.
Methods and results:
This was a randomized, controlled trial of 201 black men and women with coronary heart disease who were randomized to the TM program or health education. The primary end point was the composite of all-cause mortality, myocardial infarction, or stroke. Secondary end points included the composite of cardiovascular mortality, revascularizations, and cardiovascular hospitalizations; blood pressure; psychosocial stress factors; and lifestyle behaviors. During an average follow-up of 5.4 years, there was a 48% risk reduction in the primary end point in the TM group (hazard ratio, 0.52; 95% confidence interval, 0.29-0.92; P=0.025). The TM group also showed a 24% risk reduction in the secondary end point (hazard ratio, 0.76; 95% confidence interval, 0.51-0.1.13; P=0.17). There were reductions of 4.9 mmHg in systolic blood pressure (95% confidence interval -8.3 to -1.5 mmHg; P=0.01) and anger expression (P<0.05 for all scales). Adherence was associated with survival.
Conclusions:
A selected mind-body intervention, the TM program, significantly reduced risk for mortality, myocardial infarction, and stroke in coronary heart disease patients. These changes were associated with lower blood pressure and psychosocial stress factors. Therefore, this practice may be clinically useful in the secondary prevention of cardiovascular disease. Clinical Trial Registration- URL: www.clinicaltrials.gov Unique identifier: NCT01299935.
Presents a life-span model of development based on the Vedic psychology of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. This model proposes that systematic transcendence, as cultivated through the transcendental meditation (TM) program, will promote self-actualization (SA). Statistical meta-analysis is presented of 42 studies on the effects of TM and other forms of meditation and relaxation on SA. The effect size of TM on overall SA was approximately 3 times as large as that of other forms of meditation and relaxation. Factor analysis of the 12 scales of the Personal Orientation Inventory revealed 3 independent factors: Affective Maturity, Integrative Perspective on Self and World, and Resilient Sense of Self. On these 3 factors, the effect of TM was 3 times as large. The magnitude of these consistent differential effects suggests that systematic transcendence is the key factor. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
There is an ongoing discussion about the definition of mindfulness including the question whether mindfulness is a one-dimensional or multidimensional construct. Research on the Freiburg mindfulness inventory (FMI) has also reflected this debate. We have investigated the psychometric properties of the FMI-14-item in an online convenience sample of n = 244 individuals (150 female; mean age 28.7 (SD = 8.76)) with (n = 75) and without (n = 169) regular meditative training). A simplified version of the beck depression inventory (BDI-V) and the trait subscale of the state-trait-anxiety-inventory (STAI-T) were used for determining criterion validity. A one-dimensional (α = .83) and an alternative two-dimensional solution (αF1 = .77; αF2 = .69) of the FMI-14 were tested with a confirmatory factor analysis and yielded suboptimal fit indices. An exploratory analysis resulted in a reduced 8-item version of the two-dimensional solution with better fit indices, but low internal consistency (αF1 = .71; αF2 = .64). The factors could be identified as “Presence” (F1) and “Acceptance” (F2). Further investigation revealed that the substantial negative relationship between mindfulness and anxiety and depression is completely due to the “Acceptance” factor of mindfulness. This suggests that there may be heuristic value in the two-factorial solution, although for practical purposes it seems sufficient to assess mindfulness as one-dimensional construct.
Three studies on 362 high school students at three different schools in Taiwan tested the hypothesis that regular practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique for 15–20 min twice a day for 6 to 12 months would improve cognitive ability. The same seven variables were used in all studies: Test for Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP); Constructive Thinking Inventory (CTI); Group Embedded Figures Test (GEFT); State and Trait Anxiety (STAI); Inspection Time (IT); and Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT). Univariate testing showed that TM practice produced significant effects on all variables compared to no-treatment controls (Ps ranged from .035 to <.0001). Napping for equivalent periods of time as TM practice had no effect. Contemplation meditation improved inspection time and embedded figures, but not the other variables. The TM technique was superior to contemplation meditation on five variables. The effect sizes for TM practice were in the order of the variables listed above.
Recent research suggests that our sense of time intervals in the range of seconds is directly related to activity in the insular cortex, which contains the primary sensory area for interoception. We therefore investigated whether performance in a duration reproduction task might correlate with individual interoceptive awareness and with measurable changes in autonomic activity during the task. Thirty-one healthy volunteers participated in an interoceptive (heartbeat) perception task and in repeated temporal reproduction trials using intervals of 8, 14, and 20s duration while skin conductance levels and cardiac and respiratory periods were recorded. We observed progressive increases in cardiac periods and decreases in skin conductance level during the encoding and (less reliably) the reproduction of these intervals. Notably, individuals' duration reproduction accuracy correlated positively both with the slope of cardiac slowing during the encoding intervals and with individual heartbeat perception scores. These results support the view that autonomic function and interoceptive awareness underpin our perception of time intervals in the range of seconds.
While for centuries a wakeful and tranquil state or experience variously called "samadhi," "pure awareness," or "enlightenment" had been said to be a normal experience and the goal of meditation in Vedic, Buddhist, and Taoist traditions, there was little known about this behavior until recently, when the practice of "transcendental meditation" (TM) became available for study in Western scientific laboratories. Derived from the Vedic tradition, TM is unique because it requires no special circumstances or effort for practice. Based upon a wide spectrum of physiological data on TM, we hypothesize that meditation is an integrated response with peripheral circulatory and metabolic changes subserving increased central nervous activity. Consistent with the subjective description of meditation as a very relaxed but, at the same time, a very alert state, it is likely that such findings during meditation as increased cardiac output, probable increased cerebral blood flow, and findings reminiscent of the "extraordinary" character of classical reports: apparent cessation of CO2 generation by muscle, fivefold plasma AVP elevation, and EEG synchrony play critical roles in this putative response.
A wakeful hypometabolic state may be induced by simple, non-cultic mental techniques or by traditional meditational practices. The hypometabolic state seems to represent an integrated hypothalamic response ("relaxation response") which is consistent with a state of decreased sympathetic-nervous-system activity. A prospective investigation was designed to test whether regular elicitation of the relaxation response might lower blood-pressures in hypertensive patients who were maintained on constant antihypertensive therapy. Fourteen people were investigated. During the control period of 5.6 weeks, blood-pressures did not change significantly from day to day and averaged 145.6 mm.Hg systolic and 91.9 mm.Hg diastolic. During the experimental period of 20 weeks, systolic blood-pressures decreased to 135.0 mm.Hg (P < 0.01) and diastolic blood-pressures fell to 87.0 mm.Hg (P < 0.05). The regular elicitation of the relaxation response may, therefore, have usefulness in the management of hypertensive subjects who are already on drug therapy. The use of the relaxation response may influence the economics of the therapy of hypertension since it is practised at no cost other than time.
Oxygen consumption, heart rate, skin resistance, and electroenceph-alograph measurements were recorded before, during, and
after subjects practiced a technique called transcendental meditation. There were significant changes between the control
period and the meditation period in all measurements. During meditation, oxygen consumption and heart rate decreased, skin
resistance increased, and the electroencephalogram showed specific changes in certain frequencies. These results seem to distinguish
the state produced by transcendental meditation from commonly encountered states of consciousness and suggest that it may
have practical applications.
Prior clinical trials suggest that the Transcendental Meditation technique may decrease blood pressure of normotensive and hypertensive individuals but study-quality issues have been raised. This study was designed to assess effects of Transcendental Meditation on blood pressure using objective quality assessments and meta-analyses.
PubMed and Cochrane databases through December 2006 and collected publications on Transcendental Meditation were searched. Randomized, controlled trials comparing blood pressure responses to the Transcendental Meditation technique with a control group were evaluated. Primary outcome measures were changes in systolic and diastolic blood pressure after practicing Transcendental Meditation or following control procedures. A specific rating system (0-20 points) was used to evaluate studies and random-effects models were used for meta-analyses.
Nine randomized, controlled trials met eligibility criteria. Study-quality scores ranged from low (score, 7) to high (16) with three studies of high quality (15 or 16) and three of acceptable quality (11 or 12). The random-effects meta-analysis model for systolic and diastolic blood pressure, respectively, indicated that Transcendental Meditation, compared to control, was associated with the following changes: -4.7 mm Hg (95% confidence interval (CI), -7.4 to -1.9 mm Hg) and -3.2 mm Hg (95% CI, -5.4 to -1.3 mm Hg). Subgroup analyses of hypertensive groups and high-quality studies showed similar reductions.
The regular practice of Transcendental Meditation may have the potential to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure by approximately 4.7 and 3.2 mm Hg, respectively. These are clinically meaningful changes.
Preliminary data on factor structure and reliability of a German version of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory
- S Brandler
- T Rammsayer
Brandler, S., & Rammsayer, T. (2002). Preliminary data on factor structure and reliability
of a German version of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory. Communication at
the 11th European Conference on Personality. Germany: Jena.
Coming to our senses: Healing ourselves and the world through mindfulness
- J Kabat-Zinn
Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005). Coming to our senses: Healing ourselves and the world through
mindfulness. UK: Hachette.
Kurzfragebogen zur aktuellen Beanspruchung
- B Müller
- H. -D Basler
Müller, B., & Basler, H. -D. (1993). Kurzfragebogen zur aktuellen Beanspruchung. Beltz
Weinheim: KAB.
The time paradox: The new psychology of time that will change your life
- P Zimbardo
- J Boyd
Zimbardo, P., & Boyd, J. (2008). The time paradox: The new psychology of time that will
change your life. Simon and Schuster.