Year: 2019
Type: conference-paper
Study design: Clinical Trial
Abstract: The contents of one’s thoughts can be very powerful. Mind wandering refers to thoughts that are offtask. Negative task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) decrease sustained attention task performance. Mind wandering leads to a decrease in reading comprehension and working memory, which can negatively impact workplace, academic, and daily performances. Mindfulness meditation training increases sustained attention on the present and decreases attention on the past and future. Specifically, meditation training decreases mind wandering reports. The current study tested whether a brief fifteen minute mindfulness induction could moderate the effect of the negative affect manipulation on a sustained attention task. Participants were randomly assigned to a mindfulness, relaxation, or control conditions. Participants listened to an induction based on their condition: meditation, relaxation, or no recording. To induce negative affect, participants completed a writing task in which they wrote about a negative life event that still troubled them. Next, participants completed a sustained attention task (SART) with thought probes to assess the content of their thoughts. SART performance did not vary across conditions. However, negatively valenced mind wandering varied by condition and was lower in the mindfulness condition, F (2, 84) = 3.23, p = .045, partial η 2 = .07. Negatively valenced mind wandering was associated with poorer performance in the control (β = -0.46, p = .009) and relaxation (β = -0.71, p = .001) conditions but not in the mindfulness (β = -0.25, p = .175) condition. Mindfulness appears to reduce negative TUTs and reduce the impact of negative TUTs on task performance.
Language: English
Topic: Mind wandering and attention
Subfield: Cognitive Neuroscience
Field: Neuroscience
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7167982010