CogBlog – A Cognitive Psychology Blog

I remember my first time attending one of Jing Ye’s meditation sessions in the Rose Chapel at Colby. The idea of meditation had always been appealing to me; it sounded “new age” and profound. In reality, meditation is a lot different from what most people imagine. During my first attempt, my irritation grew as the dull aching in my lower back intensified and the sensation of pins and needles spread through my crossed legs. Not to mention the frog-like noises coming from the guy sitting next to me as he swallowed down saliva. Couldn’t he just stop that? Sitting there with eyes closed, I resorted to generating a to-do list in my head – no one would know I was cheating. Jing had told us to be present and aware of our body’s sensations and emotions in a nonjudgmental manner, but being asked to sit still left me with no choice but to confront the internal chaos that I was usually too busy to notice.

Why is meditation and mindfulness so difficult in this day and age? Our different environments can provide us with many hints. Be observant of the behaviors of others on your next walk to a class or meeting. Do you see anyone texting? Walking is thought to be a seemingly automatic, or unconscious, activity that requires little mental exertion; yet pay close attention to how well these people can walk while trying to text on their phones. Some of these people are comparable to drunk drivers, aimlessly zigzagging on the paved paths while they unknowingly exert most of their attentional resources on texting. It would be a waste of time to merely walk somewhere… wouldn’t it? That doesn’t sound too productive. This mentality – this fixation on multitasking and overstimulation – can be seen in today’s generations because of our technology-driven culture (Carrier et al., 2009). All of our hyperactive environments make it hard to focus on just one thing at a time. When we’re asked to sit with ourselves in silence, as with mindfulness meditation, we panic. We feel uneasy without stimulation or an idea to grapple with. Just because meditation feels unnatural doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing though.

Whereas the concept of long-term meditation practice sounds like it could be an effective method for increasing mental wellbeing (for those with enough patience and persistence), how can we know for sure? Who’s to say that a fast-paced life is even a bad thing? The answer to this, and many other questions, can be found through empirical research and experimentation. By examining the Buddhist practice of mindfulness and meditation through the lens of western psychological theory, certain cognitive psychologists hope to provide respectable evidence for its effectiveness.

In recent years, researchers have devised clear definitions of mindfulness and mental wellbeing – as well as methods to measure how mindful someone is. According to Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, world-renowned founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic, meditation can be thought of as “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994) According to Kabat-Zinn, we can practice mindfulness at any point in our day – such as when we are eating, talking with a friend, or even tying our shoes. No moment is off limits. In order to experimentally quantify how mindful a person is, the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS) is commonly used. The KIMS questionnaire measures four different mindfulness abilities: Observing (being able to notice or attend to internal thoughts/sensations as well as environmental stimuli), describing (being able to identify or label something in a non-judgmental manner), acting with awareness (being “in the moment” and engaged with the task at hand), and accepting without judgment (being able to let reality be the way it is without trying to change or avoid it).

Just like mindfulness, wellbeing can be broken up into four categories. The four types of mental balance that lead to wellbeing are: conation (motivation/intention), attention, cognition, and affect/emotion (Wallace & Shapiro, 2006). Conation is the ability to commit oneself to specific goals to attain happiness (for oneself or another person), attention is the ability to sustain controlled focus on a chosen item, cognition is the ability to engage with the world without distorting it through judgment or assumptions, and affect/emotion is the ability to self-regulate mood and remain emotionally stable. Although conation and affect/emotion are important for wellbeing, cognitive psychologists are most interested in determining how mindfulness meditation influences attention and cognition abilities.

To better understand the cognitive and attentional balance components of mental wellbeing, some researchers measure what is referred to as cognitive flexibility. Cognitive flexibility can be thought of as the ability to adapt to unexpected situations, to quickly switch back and forth between ideas, and to consider multiple ideas in one moment (Cañas, Quesada, Antolí, & Fajardo, 2003). You may be wondering: how does cognitive flexibility even relate to being a happier and healthier person? Specifically, how does the idea of cognitive flexibility connect to mindfulness and wellbeing? According to Moore and Malinowski, our wellbeing is influenced by perceived attitudes and emotions; so if we are actively present and adaptable, then we are better able to recognize how our emotions and moods are being impacted by different contexts. This awareness makes our mood more stable and resilient to changes in environmental conditions…which is a good thing! Mindfulness and meditation theoretically work on strengthening one’s ability to experience life in the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 2003) – So wouldn’t it make sense that cognitive flexibility and meditation are linked?

Through an experimental approach, Moore and Malinowski (2009) investigated how meditation practice and self-reported mindfulness connected to this concept of cognitive flexibility. The researchers recruited two types of participants: those who had been practicing mindfulness meditation at a local Buddhist center, and those who were non-meditators. Why did they need to test non-meditators in the first place? This control group, as it’s usually called, is important because they show the behaviors of the “typical person.” The level of someone’s cognitive flexibility is only relative to the general population. Other than the participants’ differences in mindfulness and meditation practice, Moore and Malinowski wanted the two groups to be as similar as possible. The mean ages were approximately the same (mean age Buddhists: 28.0 years, controls: 27.5 years) and they had slept for approximately the same length of time the night before (mean sleep Buddhists: 8.0 hours, mean sleep controls: 7.9 years). After all, there’s a good chance that a tired person is not going to do so well on an attention test. (Click here and here to read posts on sleep and memory).

First, all participants filled out the Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills questionnaire. Each of the 36 items on the questionnaire were formatted as statements that participants scored on a 1-5 scale (1 being “never or very rarely true”, 5 being “very often or always true.”) An example of a question that measured observing was: “I notice changes in my body, such as whether my breathing slows down or speeds up.” The researchers expected meditators to produce overall higher scores of mindfulness on the KIMS questionnaire, which they did.

To quantify cognitive flexibility, participants completed the Stroop task and the d2-test of attention. In the infamous Stroop task, participants are given a list of words – with the words printed in various primary colors (see the figure to the right). They are asked to go down the list and say the color that each word is written in. Sounds easy, right? Here’s the catch: some lists of words are printed in colors that match the word (e.g. red), some words are neutral and don’t relate to a color (e.g. dog) and some words are printed in colors that don’t match the word (e.g. red). The challenge comes when naming the color in the incompatible condition because the participant has to inhibit his/her natural reaction; it’s pretty hard to look at a word without reading it, right? This means more attentional control is needed. People with higher levels of cognitive flexibility should show quicker reaction times and more accuracy in this condition than the “average person.” The other task that I mentioned, the d2-test of attention, is very similar to the Stroop task. All you need to know about this test is that it measures how well participants are able to focus on a task without letting surrounding distractors influence their reaction time and accuracy.

The results on these tests showed that participants who meditated and had high levels of mindfulness had better cognitive flexibility and attentional performance. Specifically, those with higher ratings on the acting with awareness and observing questions of the KIMS questionnaire also had better Stroop task and d2-test outcomes. Because the Stroop task tests how well people can control mental processes that are typically automatic (i.e., controlling the natural urge to read the word), it is likely that meditation and mindfulness can strengthen one’s ability to actively direct attention. And by being able to focus your attention, you can be more conscious of your emotional state and less preoccupied with the chaos surrounding you!

So, give some thought to mindfulness and meditation the next time you’re in the middle of a stressful week. If the idea of meditation is intimidating or unappealing to you, just remember that being more mindful throughout your day will also flex your “cognitive muscles.” In other words: get off that phone and actively engage with your world!

References

Baer, R. A., Smith, G. T., & Allen, K. B. (2004). Assessment of Mindfulness by Self-Report: The Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills. Assessment, 11(3), 191-206.

Cañas, J. J., Quesada, J. F., Antolí, A., & Fajardo, I. (2003). Cognitive flexibility and adaptability to environmental changes in dynamic complex problem-solving tasks. Ergonomics, 46(5), 482–501.

Carrier, L., Cheever, N. A., Rosen, L. D., Benitez, S., & Chang, J. (2009). Multitasking across generations: Multitasking choices and difficulty ratings in three generations of Americans. Computers In Human Behavior, 25(2), 483-489.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York, NY: Hyperion.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2003). Mindfulness-based interventions in context: Past, present, and future. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), 144–156.

Moore , A. Malinowski , P. (2009). Meditation, mindfulness, and cognitive flexibility. Consciousness and Cognition, 18, 176-186.

Wallace, B. A., & Shapiro, S. (2006). Mental balance and well-being: Building bridges between Buddhism and western psychology. American Psychologist, 61(7), 690–701.

To read the original article, click here