“And Now Close Your Eyes or Lower Your Gaze”: Exploring Novice Meditators and Their Attentional Processes During Meditation

Abstract

Brief mindfulness meditation practices are associated with a wealth of benefits; however, factors that may influence the success of meditation sessions have rarely been explored. The present study explored the effects of the visual environment as a factor of successful meditation. Eye-tracking techniques were employed to objectively measure attention within three attention-deviating conditions with basic meditation instructions, and the potential influence of personality traits as assessed through administering the HEXACO-60-PI, a self-report measure, to participants. Statistically significant results were uncovered regarding decreased fixation durations and increased state mindfulness scores of participants within the blank screen conditions over the two eyes-open conditions. No significant effect was found regarding fixation counts, which decreased within the blank screen condition. The findings regarding reduced state anxiety did not reach significance and there were no significant differences regarding the six personality types between conditions. The present study offers a step towards understanding how brief mindfulness meditation sessions can be optimised.

Improvement of Attention in Elementary School Students through Fixation Focus Training Activity

“…As shown in Figure 1 , there are two major attention training models: external stimulation using interesting games [ 12 , 14 , 16 , 17 ], and the use of biofeedback to enhance the effectiveness of concentration exercises [ 13 , 14 ]. On the other hand, the most relevant research for this focused training is mindfulness meditation training [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 19 ]. This study belongs to the mode of internal observation.…”

“…The field of vision should only contain the item focused on [ 11 ]. Training methods to improve students’ attention include computer games [ 12 ], neurofeedback [ 13 , 14 , 15 ], virtual and augmented reality [ 16 , 17 ], music [ 18 ], and meditation [ 19 ]. Table 1 provides details of these methods.…”

Exploring Mindfulness and Mindful Eating and Visual Attention Towards Food Cues: Preliminary Findings

“…Participants were also encouraged to notice when their mind wandered, and to non-judgmentally return their attention back to their breathing. This 10-min audio recording employed the key features of mindfulness practice, focusing on present moment and acceptance (Kabat-Zinn, 1990) and has been used in other mindfulness literature (Bennett et al, 2018;Dutt et al, 2019;Ilies et al, 2019;Sprawson et al, 2020). The full script to the mindfulness breathing meditation exercise (Mantzios, 2018) can be made available upon request to the corresponding author.…”

Mindfulness in face recognition: Embedding mindfulness instructions in the face‐composite construction process

“…First, mindfulness prompts, which encourage witnesses to close their eyes when visualising the face, introduce eyeclosure (i.e., an instruction to close the eyes or an automatic impulse to close the eyes) to improve memory for events (e.g., Perfect et al, 2008;Vredeveldt et al, 2010;Vredeveldt & Penrod, 2013). As part of meditative practices, eye-closure has been observed to facilitate free recall of an event without an increase in errors (e.g., Wagstaff et al, 2004Wagstaff et al, , 2011 and researchers put forward the idea that its importance lies in reducing general cognitive load (e.g., eliminating any monitoring of the environment; Perfect et al, 2008;Sprawson et al, 2020), resisting distractions (e.g., Perfect et al, 2011) and facilitating visualisation (Vredeveldt et al, 2011). 1 Second, a task-congruent practice has the potential to cultivate mindfulness without the need to engage in meditation.…”