University of Richmond Blogs – Global Tag Feed For : cn-style 2015-10-10 22:47:59

Have you ever meditated before?

Even if you have, go find somewhere comfortable and quiet to sit. Take a deep breath and clear your mind. Watch the video below and follow the instructions.

How are you feeling now? Calmer? More relaxed? While meditation used to be primarily for spiritual purposes, it is now used as a form of relaxation and stress reduction. It’s been shown to help emotional well-being and overall health. Research has shown that meditation has the potential to increase your ability to pay attention.

 

What is attentional blink?

Attentional blink occurs when we don’t notice something shortly after it occurs after something else. To test this in the lab, a series of objects are shown in rapid succession. A subject is asked to identify two target objects out of the series. If the second target object is shown soon after the first, the subject will be “blind” to it. The sensation of not being able to see the second object is what is known as attentional blink.

 

What causes attentional blink?

There are numerous theories as to what causes attentional blink:

  • Inhibition Theory
    • Confusion between the two target images occurs during the target identification process. This causes a gap in attention.
  • Interference Theory
    • Other items in the series of target images interfere and compete for limited mental resources.
  • Attentional Capacity Theory
    • The process of identifying first target image is too strenuous, causing the brain to not have enough resources to identify the second image in time.
  • Two-Stage Processing Theory
    • Processing takes two stages: noticing the targets, and processing the items. Attentional blink occurs when the second target appears while the first target is being processed.

 

Attentional blink diagram
Diagram from the Slagter et. al. (2007) article showing the design of the task used to test attentional blink.

The effect of meditation

Slagter et. al. (2007) conducted an experiment to explore a possible connection between the effects of meditation and performance on attentional blink tasks. The subjects were divided into two groups. The novice group, after being given a 1-hour meditation instruction session, meditated for 20 minutes each day over the course of a week. The practitioner group attended a three-month long retreat where they meditated for 10-12 hours each day. After this, both groups were subjected to attentional blink tests and had their scalp-related brain potentials measured during the test. The study found that the practitioners had far fewer occurrences of attentional blink than the novice subjects, and they managed to allocate their limited amount of attentional resources more evenly between the first and second targets. These findings suggests that meditation has the ability to decrease the likelihood of experiencing attentional blink and to improve resource allocation in the brain.

Why should I care?

Why is attentional blink so important? Coursework from MIT poses the following scenario:

“Let’s say a crime was committed, and they pull the people who witnessed it and ask, ‘How many gunshots did you hear?’ Remember, if you hear one gunshot, you may panic and not notice the next couple of gunshots. And different people will give different reports of how many criminals there were, how many gunshots they heard, and so on. This is a problem in situations where we need to count or keep track of every occurrence of something.”

Attentional blink should be considered in any scenario where a split-second decision needs to be made, such as while driving. Meditation might improve your awareness of your surroundings and make sure that you take in all of the available information before making a decision.

 

Sources

Blakeslee, S. (2007, May 8). Study Suggests Meditation Can Help Train Attention. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/health/psychology/08medi.html?_r=0
Cherry, K. (n.d.). What Is Attentional Blink? Retrieved from http://psychology.about.com/od/cognitivepsychology/fl/What-Is-Attentional-Blink.htm
Mindfulness Guided Meditation – 5 Minutes [Video file]. (2013, November 3). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEzbdLn2bJc
Slagter, H. A., Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Francis, A. D., Nieuwenhuis, S., Davis, J. M., & Davidson, R. J. (2007). Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources. PLoS Biology, 5(6). Retrieved from http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.0050138
Ward, J. (n.d.). The Attending Brain. In The Student’s Guide to Cognitive Neuroscience (3rd ed., pp. 135-164). London: Psychology Press.