Improve Proactive Cognition with Mindfulness
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“Mindfulness meditation has been found to elicit a positive impact on cognitive performance and abilities such as attention, memory, cognitive flexibility, and quality of task performance.” – Lauren Martin
Mindfulness is the ability to focus on what is transpiring in the present moment. It involves a greater emphasis on attention to the immediate stimulus environment. Mindful people generally have better attentional abilities and have fewer intrusive thoughts and less mind wandering. As a result, mindfulness has been shown to be associated with improved cognition (thinking). Cognition can involve planning for the future (proactive cognition) or it can also involve processing what has, or is, occurring (reactive cognition). It is not known whether mindfulness training affects either or both forms of cognition.
In today’s Research News article “The Effect of Mindfulness Training on Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Control.” (See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01002/full?utm_source=F-AAE&utm_medium=EMLF&utm_campaign=MRK_686352_69_Psycho_20180626_arts_A ), Li and colleagues recruited meditation naïve adults and randomly assigned them to either receive 8 weeks of mindfulness training or a no-treatment control condition. Mindfulness training occurred with a once per week, 2.5-hour group training session and 30 minutes of daily home practice. It included meditation, body scan, and yoga practices. They were measured before and after training for mindfulness and its 5 facets, Observing, Describing, Acting with awareness, Non-judging, and Non-reacting.
The participants also performed a Continuous Performance Test before and after training. Participants pressed a left button or a right button depending on whether a target or non-target letter followed an “A” on the screen and only one button regardless of letter type if it followed a “B” on the screen. Proactive cognition can be assessed by the tendency to react to the first letter (the “A” or “B”) regardless of what follows. Retroactive cognition can be assessed by the tendency to react to the target letter regardless of what preceded it (the “A” or “B”).
Not surprisingly, the mindfulness trained group had significant increases in all facets of mindfulness where the control group did not. More significantly, they found that the mindfulness trained group had higher scores for proactive control relative to retroactive control than the no-treatment group. This suggests that mindfulness training enhances proactive control and not retroactive cognitive control.
These results suggest that increasing mindfulness results in an enhancement in responding to the present moment (proactive) and less to the past (retroactive). Since, mindfulness training is designed to do just that, the results suggest that the training makes the individual more sensitive to immediate stimuli, just as its’ supposed to.
So, improve proactive cognition with mindfulness.
“The meditation group did especially better on all the cognitive tests that were timed. In tasks where participants had to process information under time constraints causing stress, the group briefly trained in mindfulness performed significantly better.” – Fadel Zeidan
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Li Y, Liu F, Zhang Q, Liu X and Wei P (2018) The Effect of Mindfulness Training on Proactive and Reactive Cognitive Control. Front. Psychol. 9:1002. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.01002
Abstract
Previous studies have demonstrated that mindfulness practice can improve general cognitive control. However, little research has examined whether mindfulness practices affect different cognitive control strategies. According to the dual mechanisms of control (DMC) model, different cognitive control strategies may play distinct roles in individuals’ lives. Proactive control allows people to maintain and prepare for goals, whereas reactive control allows them to respond flexibly to a changing environment. Thus, this study investigates the influences of mindfulness training on proactive and reactive control measured by the AX version of the Continuous Performance Test (AX-CPT). Thirty participants completed AX-CPT and the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) before and after random assignment to either an 8-week mindfulness training group or a control group. The results showed no interaction between group and test time for AY or BX trial type, but the training group had fewer post-test errors on the BX trial and a higher Behavior Shift Index (BSI) of reaction time (RT) compared with the control group. This finding indicates enhanced trend of proactive control with mindfulness training. A positive correlation between the BSI of RT and observing scores on the FFMQ confirmed the connection between attentional components in mindfulness and proactive control. Errors on the AY trial in the post-test decreased in both groups, reflecting reactive control that did not differ between groups. The 8-week mindfulness training demonstrates a potential improvement effect on proactive control and could be helpful in overcoming interference.