The Influence of Mindfulness Meditation Retreat on Attention to Internal Experience

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.

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.