Effortless Concentration: The Impact of Guided Awareness Instruction on Attention
Lead Investigator: Amishi Jha, Loch Kelly
Institution: University of Pennsylvania
Many studies suggest that attention can be broadly conceptualized as functioning in a manner which is either directed or receptive, and that these complementary states are supported by distinct neural systems within dorsal vs. ventro fronto-parietal brain regions (see Shulman and Corbetta, 2002). In collaboration with non-dual teacher Loch Kelly, Dr. Jha will be investigating the influence of distinct modes of awareness on the ability to overcome habitual responses, inhibit distraction, sustain attention, and maintain and manipulate information. Participants will be split into three groups, and each will listen to a short audio recording instructing them to guide their awareness in a particular way. One group will receive guided instructions to restrict and effortfully control their mental content to only a subset of stimuli (e.g., attention to your breath). A second group will received guided instruction in nondual awareness. A third group will receive instructions to allow their attention to naturally wander freely. After listening to the recordings, all three groups will be given an identical set of computer-based tasks employed to index various aspects of attention. We will use the Flanker task to index the ability to overcome prepotent response tendencies (See Rowe et al., 2005); the Sustained Attention Response Task (SART) to index sustained attention and vulnerability to mind-wandering (Smith et al., 2004); and the Operation Span Task to Index executive attention capacity. We will compare and contrast task performance to determine if instruction in distinct modes of awareness leads to performance differences across groups.
The Baumann Institute
