Mindfulness and Mental Depletion Influence

¶ … mindfulness and mental depletion influence inattentional blindness?

The first study involving the layout of the UNSW campus necessitated that students engaged in a particular writing task. There were two conditions: the 'depletion' conditions where the task was facilitated and easy, and the 'no depletion' condition that was forced and difficult.

The second study, involving the raisins, likewise, involved two conditions: the mindfulness condition where students were requested to intentionally focus on the raisins and the non-mindfulness condition where students were detached from the raisins. The objective of the study was to assess the percentage of students who observed a red shape moving across the screen during their particular tasks.

In the mindfulness condition, 68% of students noticed the red shape as compared to a ratio of 59% in the non-mindfulness condition.

Similarly, the mindfulness condition of the second study showed a similar association of 65% who noticed the red shape whilst the 'no-mindfulness' condition indicated 55% of student who overlooked it. On the other hand, no significant difference was discovered between the 'depletion' and 'no depletion' study (F (1,806)=1.17, p>.05), otherwise referred to as 'inattentional blindness' where it was predicted that student's occupation with their task would distract them from seeing the shape. This was in contrast to the study on inattentional blindness where, a significant difference was found between participants who performed the mindfulness task and those who did not on inattentional blindness (F (1,806)= 5.62, p05).

Implications of results

Chiesa and colleagues (2011) observed that previous studies indicate that practicing mindfulness augments cognitive abilities but that further research is needed to validate that position. Our limited study indicates that mindfulness enabled more students to observe and see the red shape moving across the screen as compared to those who were not mindfully engaged. On the other hand, and reinforcing the research findings of Simons and Chabris (1999), we found that regardless of level of preoccupation with involved activity we only notice that which we are focused on and care about. Implications are enormous. Mindfulness has been a factor that has been consistently associated with enhanced experience of the targeted stimuli. Research on semantic affective priming indicates that priming may be reduced, if not inhibited, when participants are encouraged to focus on specific non-evaluative lower-level features of the prime (e.g., Stolz & Besner, 1996), for instance, when a familiar evaluative word such as LOVE is broken down into a letter string consisting of L-O-V-E and participants are encouraged to focus on those specific letters. This study seems to imply that mindfulness of non-evaluative objects not only enhances experience of that object but also extends to non-evaluative objects in one's immediate environment.

Methodological limitations

Limitations are numerous and include the following factors: The sample of students may have been too small. A larger sample may have been conducive to different results. Secondly, there may have been distractions in the environment that precluded some students from noticing the shape. Thirdly, the groups may not have been adequately matched (was random sampling performed?). There may have been one or more students who may have experienced conditions that would have precluded them from noticing the shape (i.e. being short-sighted, effected by mood, environment, and so forth). Moreover, it seems to me that a double-blind system would have been best here with both researcher / facilitator and students unaware of the objective and intention of this study. The researcher may have unintentionally contaminated the mood of one group as compared to the other. These and further limitations need to be addressed before a reiterated similar study is conducted.

Suggestions for future research in this area

The author's study seems to imply that mindfulness of non-evaluative objects not only enhances experience of that object but also extends to non-evaluative objects in one's immediate environment. It would be interesting to investigate whether results extend too to affective stimuli in one's immediate environment, and, furthermore, to expand research to mindfulness on affective-stimuli and assess whether participants are as equally able to discern implicit existence of evaluative phenomena in one's immediate environment as similarly as they can in regards to non-evaluative phenomena.

How can this be applied to understanding of human behavior?