NCT04749264

The Influence of Mindfulness Meditation Retreat on Attention to Internal Experience

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 142 (actual)
• Sponsor: University of Haifa · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years – 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

Although attention is thought to have a definitive functional role in mindfulness meditation training and its salutary mechanisms of action, extant empirical evidence is mixed and limited. In the proposed study, we propose to test whether 6 to 7-days mindfulness meditation retreats (N=90), relative to a wait-list control condition (N=45), will impact internal attentional processes or attention to internal experience (e.g., thoughts and bodily sensations); and whether these internal attentional change processes predict salutary outcomes of mindfulness meditation retreats. Participants will complete tasks designed to measure attention to internal experience before and then immediately following the retreat, as well as self-report measures of salutary outcomes before and 2-weeks post-retreat. Matched controls will complete the tasks at parallel time-points in the lab.

Detailed description

Broadly, the investigators first aim is to assess whether mindfulness meditation retreat will yield significant improvement at post-relative to pre-retreat, compared to matched control, in each of these internal attentional processes: (i) enhanced ability to disengage from negative self-referential thoughts; (ii) reduced selection bias to negative self-referential thoughts; (iii) enhanced interoceptive attention and sensibility to a broader range of locations, intensities and hedonic tones of bodily sensations in response to negative and neutral self-referential thoughts; as well as (iv) enhanced mindful awareness during mindfulness meditation as expressed in the objects and temporal dynamics of mindful awareness. Second, the investigators will assess whether each of the aforementioned internal attentional change processes from pre- to post-retreat, will predict change from pre- to 2-weeks post-retreat in mindful awareness in daily living, mindfulness-related processes (e.g., decentering), and mental health. Third, investigators will assess whether previous meditation experience moderates these effects.

Conditions

• Attention Impaired
• Cognitive Change
• Mental Health Issue

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Mindfulness meditation retreat	6 to 7-days mindfulness retreat (Vipassana/insight meditation). The retreats are held in silence and led by senior teachers with many years of experience in teaching meditation. The focus of the retreat is the practice of mindfulness meditation while sitting and walking. Retreats include focused attention and open monitoring mindfulness meditation practices. Each retreat has a similar practice schedule thus the amount and nature of formal practice is mostly the same.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-08-01
• Primary completion: 2021-12-01
• Completion: 2022-06-01
• First posted: 2021-02-11
• Last updated: 2023-02-14

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Israel