Open AccessPerformance in attentional tasks following meditative focusing and focusing without meditation
Author(s) -
B R Raghavendra,
Shirley Telles
Publication year - 2012
Publication title -
ancient science of life/ancient science of life
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2249-9547
pISSN - 0257-7941
DOI - 10.4103/0257-7941.113799
Subject(s) - meditation , test (biology) , symbol (formal) , psychology , task (project management) , digit symbol substitution test , cognitive psychology , mathematics , developmental psychology , theology , philosophy , medicine , linguistics , engineering , paleontology , systems engineering , biology , alternative medicine , pathology , placebo
Ancient Indian yoga texts have described four mental states. These are caïcalatä (random thinking), ekāgratā (focusing without meditation), dhāraṇā (meditative focusing), and dhyāna (defocused meditative expansiveness). A previous study compared the performance in a cancellation task at the beginning and end of each of the four mental states (practiced for 20 minutes each, on four separate days) showed an increase in the scores after dhāraṇā Hence, the present study was designed to assess the effects of dhāraṇā (meditative focusing) and ekāgratā (focusing without meditation) on two attention tasks (i) d2 test of attention and (ii) digit symbol substitution test.