Assuming that many readers are college students, going through various strenuous activities, studying for exams and running around like chickens without heads when writing their papers, this article is aimed at helping you improve your attentional span.
A recent study (and many other before) suggests that meditation might improve at attentional span or capacity, defined by the number of items one can hold and manipulate with in their working memory. In the study of Slagter et al. (2007), participants had to perform attentional blind paradigm. In the paradigm, items are presented very quickly in succession and subjects are supposed to identify two white letters among black letters. When the letters are in a close temporal proximity from each other, the percentage of identification of the second letter decreases. See the video with only red letters.
The reason why this phenomenon called attentional blink occurs is the limited attentional resources we have when allocating our attention. Thus, identification of the first letter exerts the attention that needs to be restored and when that does not happen, attention "blinks".
In the study, subject who performed intensive three-months long meditation were far better at identifying the second letter and not experiencing attentional blink then control subjects. Thus, meditation helps the training of attention via the mechanisms of selecting and concentrating on task-relevant goal and exerting less of attentional resources for particular attention-demanding task.
A recent study (and many other before) suggests that meditation might improve at attentional span or capacity, defined by the number of items one can hold and manipulate with in their working memory. In the study of Slagter et al. (2007), participants had to perform attentional blind paradigm. In the paradigm, items are presented very quickly in succession and subjects are supposed to identify two white letters among black letters. When the letters are in a close temporal proximity from each other, the percentage of identification of the second letter decreases. See the video with only red letters.
The reason why this phenomenon called attentional blink occurs is the limited attentional resources we have when allocating our attention. Thus, identification of the first letter exerts the attention that needs to be restored and when that does not happen, attention "blinks".
In the study, subject who performed intensive three-months long meditation were far better at identifying the second letter and not experiencing attentional blink then control subjects. Thus, meditation helps the training of attention via the mechanisms of selecting and concentrating on task-relevant goal and exerting less of attentional resources for particular attention-demanding task.
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