Mindfulness has been shown to improve inhibitory control
- mindfulness requires us to refrain from acting upon our immediate compulsions
- Thus mindfulness shows improvements in inhibitory control
At a meditation retreat, neuroscientist Cliff Saron put together a rigorous battery of assessments for students going through a three-month training in a range of classic meditation styles, including some, like mindfulness of breathing, meant to increase focus and others to cultivate positive states like loving-kindness and equanimity. While the “yogis” pursued their demanding schedule of meditating six or more hours a day for ninety days, Cliff had them take a battery of tests at the beginning, middle, and end of the retreat, and five months after the retreat had concluded.
The comparison group was people who had signed up for the three-month retreat but who did not start until the first group finished. Such a “wait-list” control eliminates worries about expectation demand and similar psychological confounds (but does not add an active control like HEP—which would be a logistic and financial burden in a study like this). A stickler for precision in research, Cliff flew people in the wait-list group to the retreat place and gave them exactly the same assessments in the identical context as those in the retreat.
One test presented lines of different lengths in rapid succession, with the instruction to press one button for a line that was shorter than the others. Only one out of ten lines was short; the challenge is to inhibit the knee-jerk tendency to press the button for a short line when a long one appears. As the retreat progressed, so did the capacity for inhibitory control in meditators. A follow-up five months after the retreats ended also found that the improvements remained. And the study dispels doubts that all the positive traits found in long-term meditators are simply due to self-selection, where people who already had those traits choose the practice or stay with it in the long run.
References
- Goleman, Daniel. Davidson, A., Richard. (2017). Altered Traits Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body Chapter 5. A Mind Undisturbed (EPub p. 89). Garden City, NY: Avery.
Metadata
Type:🔴 Tags: Psychology / Cognitive Science / Yoga Status:⛅️