Dispositional Mindfulness and Attentional Control: The Specific Association Between the Mindfulness Facets of Non-judgment and Describing With Flexibility of Early Operating Orienting in Conflict Detection

Abstract

Background: A state of mindfulness refers to a present-centered attentional awareness without judging. Being mindful seems to increase the ability to be flexible and adaptive in attention focus according to situational contingencies. The way mindfulness affects such attentional control is often measured with three different but interacting attentional networks of alerting (preparedness), orienting (selection of stimulus), and conflict detection (suppression of irrelevant stimuli). In the current study, the aim was to study the effects of dispositional mindfulness on these attention networks, and specifically the effects on the interactions between these attention networks.Methods: Fifty participants between 19 and 29 years old filled out the questionnaire Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and performed the revised version of the Attention Network Test (ANT-R). The five FFMQ facets of Describing, Non-Judgment, Orienting, Non-Reactivity, and Acting with Awareness were included as predictors in multiple linear regression analyses with the ANT-R scores of alerting, orienting, conflict detection, and the interaction scores of alerting by conflict detection and orienting by conflict detection as outcome variables, respectively.Results: Higher dispositional mindfulness as measured with the five FFMQ facets predicted interaction scores (faster reaction times) of orienting by conflict detection, but none of the other ANT-R scores. It was specifically the FFMQ facets of Describing and non-judgment that predicted this lower interaction score of orienting by conflict detection.Conclusion: Our findings indicate that being mindful is associated with a more flexible and efficient orienting attention. It is associated with a higher ability to disengage from salient stimuli that is irrelevant to pursue goal-directed behavior (conflict detection).

Effects of mindfulness on psychological and psychophysiological responses during self‐paced walking

“…When individuals do not learn about the pleasures of physical activity, they might become reliant upon the presence of sensory distractions to be able to tolerate the burden of executing movements (Hallett & Lamont, 2015;Price & Hooven, 2018). Accordingly, interventions that have the propensity to optimize attentional control (Sørensen et al, 2018) during physical activity and indirectly facilitate awareness of positive emotions (Lalot, Delplanque, & Sander, 2014;e.g., MF meditation) may be more likely to succeed in counteracting physical inactivity. Interestingly, the effects of MF on exercise, as well as the brain mechanisms that underlie such effects are presently uncharted.…”

Higher trait mindfulness is associated with empathy but not with emotion recognition abilities

“…We wanted to explore whether the potential link between mindfulness and emotion recognition is direct, or whether it could be explained by effects of mindfulness on these variables. Trait mindfulness has been associated with more efficient attention networks [ 7 , 24 , 25 ], and this could plausibly account for enhancements in emotion recognition, because attention has been shown to benefit emotion recognition performance [ 26 , 27 ]. Similarly, trait mindfulness has been associated with higher empathy [ 28 ], and empathy could support a better emotion recognition performance ([ 15 , 29 ]; but see [ 30 ]).…”

Can clinical psychology students benefit from brief and intensive mindfulness training?

“…The ‘orienting’ network measures the ability to select relevant information from different sensory inputs, also referred to as selective attention. The ‘executive control’ network resolves conflict that arises between potential responses, in which salient and impulsive responses are inhibited for the task‐relevant responses, also referred to as ‘conflict monitoring’ (Chiesa et al, ; Sørensen et al, ). Performing the ANT, the participants were presented with a target stimulus, a centre arrow flanked by two arrows on each side (see Fan et al, ; Sørensen et al, ).…”

“…The ‘executive control’ network resolves conflict that arises between potential responses, in which salient and impulsive responses are inhibited for the task‐relevant responses, also referred to as ‘conflict monitoring’ (Chiesa et al, ; Sørensen et al, ). Performing the ANT, the participants were presented with a target stimulus, a centre arrow flanked by two arrows on each side (see Fan et al, ; Sørensen et al, ). They were instructed to indicate the direction of the centre arrow by pressing a key with the index finger for the left direction and with the ring finger for the right direction on a mouse.…”