Meditators Exercise Better Endogenous and Exogenous Control of Visual Awareness
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Meditators Exercise Better Endogenous and Exogenous Control of Visual Awareness Narayanan Srinivasan 1,2
&
Shradhanjali Tripathi 1 & Ishan Singhal 1
Accepted: 31 August 2020 # Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Objectives Meditation practice has shown improvements in perception, attention, and cognitive control. Here, we study the extent of endogenous and exogenous control meditators have over their visual awareness, when they view a bi-stable image. Methods In experiment one, we investigate the differences between meditators and controls in terms of endogenous perceptual control, i.e., when they are instructed to speed up or slow down perceptual switches when viewing a Necker cube. In experiment two, we investigate how stimulus context and flankers (exogenous perceptual control) affect dwell times of visual percepts for meditators and non-meditators. Results Our results show that meditators (in comparison with controls) have longer dwell times in the neutral baseline condition. Meditators are also able to speed up and slow down the dwell times of their percepts more (relative to their baseline) than nonmeditators. The dwell time distributions of meditators (mean, variance, and skewness) are also immune to flanker effects while viewing bi-stable images. Conclusions The results show that meditators have better endogenous (instruction driven) and exogenous (stimulus driven) control compared with non-meditators over the contents and properties of their perceptual experience. The control exhibited by meditators is critical for not only understanding the effects of meditation but points to the need for models of visual perception and cognitive control to incorporate those effects. Keywords Meditation . Visual awareness . Necker cube . Flanker effect . Exogenous control . Endogenous control
Attention influences not just behavioral performance but also perceptual experience (Baijal and Srinivasan 2009; Carrasco et al. 2004; Mishra and Srinivasan 2017). Our perceptual experience has been studied using ambiguous figures like bistable stimuli (Blake and Logothetis 2002). Such stimuli offer the ability to study the changing perceptual experience of the stimulus without a corresponding change in the stimulus itself. Bi-stable images have a long history as a tool to understand Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01496-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Narayanan Srinivasan [email protected]; [email protected] 1
Centre of Behavioural and Cognitive Sciences, University of Allahabad, Allahabad 211002, India
2
Interdisciplinary Program in Cognitive Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, Kanpur 208016, India
perceptual processes and how these are influenced by volition and attention (Leopold and Logothetis 1999; Long and Toppino 2004). There is evidence that attentional training and practice influence voluntary control in binocular rivalry (Ooi and
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