Meditation can reduce habitual responding

Area of Science:

• Cognitive Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Mindfulness Research

Background:

• Limited research exists on the cognitive effects of meditation.
• Meditation's clinical applications often stem from its cognitive aspects.
• This study investigates meditation's impact on habitual responding.

Purpose of the Study:

• To experimentally test if meditation reduces habitual responding.
• To provide empirical evidence for meditation's cognitive consequences.

Main Methods:

• Two studies used pre-test/post-test designs with a 20-minute attention task (meditation, rest, or control).
• Participants included 120 undergraduates (Study 1) and 90 undergraduates (Study 2).
• Habitual responding was assessed using Stroop and word production tasks; arousal and attention were also measured.

Main Results:

• Meditation participants showed reduced habitual responding on the Stroop task (Study 1) and category production task (Study 2).
• In Study 2, meditation led to the generation of more atypical items, indicating less habitual responding.
• Neither arousal nor attention ability (TAS scores) mediated these effects, though high TAS scores correlated with atypical responding.

Conclusions:

• Meditation effectively reduces habitual responding across different cognitive tasks.
• This effect was observed when participants were aware of the goal to respond non-habitually.
• Findings support meditation as a method to alter cognitive response patterns.