Short-Term Training in Loving-Kindness Meditation Produces a State, But Not a Trait, Alteration of Attention

Abstract

While mindfulness meditation has been associated with enhanced attentional abilities, the consequences of loving-kindness meditation for attention have not previously been investigated. We examined the trait and state effects of 8 weeks of training in loving-kindness meditation (LKM) on the attentional blink. The attentional blink is a period of time in which a target stimulus is less likely to be detected if it follows too quickly (approximately 500 ms) after a previously detected target. For the two experiments reported here, a group of participants trained in LKM by meditating for approximately 15 min per day, four days per week, for 8 weeks. Experiment 1 utilized a pre-post design, with a non-meditating control group, to examine whether this training reduced the attentional blink. No differences were found. However, in an exploratory analysis, meditators did exhibit increases in two facets of mindfulness measured by the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire: observation and descriptiveness. In experiment 2, we tested for a state effect of LKM by having trained meditators practice LKM immediately prior to the attentional blink task. Here, meditators had a significantly reduced blink size compared to control participants. To establish that this reduction was caused by the combination of LKM training with pre-task meditation, we analyzed the data in experiment 2 with respect to one of our previous works, which reported that the practice of LKM immediately prior to the attentional blink task in those without meditation training did not reduce the blink magnitude. This analysis also revealed a significant difference. Therefore, training in LKM, coupled with its practice immediately prior to an attention task, caused a state reduction in the attentional blink. These results are the first to demonstrate that LKM, an emotion-focused practice, influences cognitive processing.

The effect of loving-kindness meditation on positive emotions: a meta-analytic review

“…Unlike the meditation skills, which are similar across interventions, the component of disclosure can vary from intervention to intervention, and study reports often mentioned the basic topic of disclosure but omitted the details. Although further analysis on this part of intervention is not possible, the present meta-analysis found that the two non-RCT interventions without weekly courses ( Sears and Kraus, 2009 ; May et al, 2011 ) showed relatively small effect sizes. The lack of weekly courses may confound other factors such as lower motivation, but such results still implied the importance of other components besides meditation in interventions.…”

“…The influence of the length of the interventions was not explored because the structure of interventions varied from intensive whole day meditation for 4 days ( Alba, 2013 ) to 15 min per week but lasting 12 weeks ( Sears and Kraus, 2009 ). As for the influence of weekly courses, subgroup analysis showed that two studies ( Sears and Kraus, 2009 ; May et al, 2011 ) that did not include weekly courses showed very low effect size (Hedges’ g = 0.116, 95% CI [-0.249, 0.829]), whereas the effect size for the other five studies was relatively higher (Hedges’ g = 0.452, 95% CI [0.286, 0.618]) or 0.303, 95% CI [0.180, 0.425]), although the between subgroup difference was not significant ( p > 0.083) (see Figures 4 and 5 ). In addition, Johnson et al (2011) and Kearney et al (2014) applied the interventions among people with schizophrenia and people with PTSD, respectively; both of them reported significant increases in positive emotions, and the effect size based on other studies with non-clinical samples did not essentially change (Hedges’ g = 0.264, 95% CI [0.023, 0.504] or 0.229, 95% CI [0.060, 0.398]).…”

“…However, some studies reported the correlation between the time of meditation and effect at the individual level. Three studies reported that there was no significant relationship between practice time and daily positive emotions in their interventions ( Leiberg et al, 2011 ; May et al, 2011 ; Jazaieri et al, 2014 ). In addition, Lee et al (2012) reported that LKM meditators did not have greater positive emotions in daily life than matched novices, and there was no significant relationship between practice time and daily positive emotions among meditators.…”

Buddhist-Derived Loving-Kindness and Compassion Meditation for the Treatment of Psychopathology: a Systematic Review

“…Of the 54 papers that underwent a full-text review, the five most common reasons for exclusion were that the study: (i) featured a single-dose adapted LKM or CM experimental test rather than training as part of a program of psychotherapy (e.g., Barnhofer, Chittka, Nightingale, Visser, & Crane, 2010;Crane, Jandric, Barnhofer, & Williams, 2010;Engström, & Söderfeldt, 2010;Feldman, Greeson, & Senville, 2010;Hutcherson et al, 2008;Lee et al, 2012;Logie & Frewen, 2014), (ii) utilized an intervention integrating lovingkindness and/or compassion techniques that was not based on meditation (e.g., Gilbert & Procter, 2006;Leiberg et al, 2011;Mayhew & Gilbert, 2008;Oman, Thoresen, & Hedberg, 2010), (iii) was not designed to explicitly assess changes in the symptom severity of DSM-IV-TR Axis I disorders in clinical samples and/or known concomitants thereof in subclinical/healthy samples (e.g., Condon, Desbordes, Miller, & DeSteno, 2013;Hunsinger, Livingston, & Isbell, 2013;Mascaro, Rilling, Negi, & Raison, 2013b;May et al, 2011;Weng et al, 2013), (iv) was primarily based on self-compassion techniques (e.g., Albertson, Neff, & Dill-Shackleford, 2014;Neff & Germer, 2013;Shapira, & Mongraina, 2010), or (v) was not published in a peer-reviewed journal (e.g., Humphrey, 1999;Kleinman, 2011;Law, 2012;Templeton, 2007;Weibel, 2008).…”

Aesthetics and the Sciences of Mind

“…22 Mindfulness techniques improve ability to detect stimuli and accurately identify their properties. They reduce attentional blink, or the period of time after stimulus detection before a similar stimulus can be detected again (Brown et al 1984a(Brown et al , 1984bMay et al 2011;Slagter et al 2007Slagter et al , 2009, improve the speed of encoding of visual information, thus allowing subjects to detect stimuli of shorter duration (Brown et al 1984a(Brown et al , 1984bJensen et al 2012), and improve reaction times to auditory stimuli (Lutz et al 2009). They improve critical flicker fusion frequency, a measure of visual acuity reflecting one's ability to detect that a figure is flickering rather than steady (Manjunath and Telles 1999;Raghuraj and Telles 2002;Telles et al 1995Telles et al , 2007; see Cahn and Polich 2006 for discussion.…”