Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Past research has found that mindfulness meditation trainingimproves executive attention and that this effect could bedriven by more efficient allocation of resources on demandingattentional tasks, such as the Flanker Task. However, it is notclear whether these changes depend on long-term practice.We sought to investigate the effects of a brief, 10-minutemeditation session on attention in novice meditators,compared to a control activity. We also tested moderation byindividual differences in Neuroticism. We found thatparticipants randomly assigned to meditate for 10 minutesshowed improved performance on incongruent trials on aFlanker task, with no detriment in reaction times, indicatingbetter allocation of resources. Neuroticism moderated thiseffect, as only those low in Neuroticism showed improvedallocation of attentional resources following meditation.