Meditation Flashcards
Cognition
Memory
Mental process of acquiring and understanding knowledge thru thought, exp, and senses
Process whereby info is encoded, consolidated, retrieved
- Sensory, short term, long term (serial processing in moral model of memory)
Short term memory
- Duration
- type of memory stored
- Capacity, tested using what test
- Related to what
- Limitations
Mental sketch pad where info is kept
- Seconds to minutes (~20 secs usually)
- Info usually decays unless emotionally salient or mentally rehearsed
- 7 +/- 2, tested using digit span test
- intelligence
- Multitasking difficult to explain (performance should be worse if one store is being split, but this isn’t true)
Parts of working memory working together to manipulate info
- Digit symbol test
- OSPAN test
- Central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad
- Digital paired w/ symbols; ppl w/ good WM don’t look at legend as much and perform faster + accurately
- Count # of unrelated words that can be remembered (temporary storage) while simultaneously carrying out math task (active processing); Rxn time impacted by age but not really accuracy
Long term memory
- Duration
- Reinforced how?
- Declarative vs Nondeclarative/Procedural
- School performance has been correlated w/ what- Why?
- Stores info for mins, hours, days, weeks, beyond
- Loses detail over time but can he reinforced by repetition
- Declarative (things you know that you can tell others; hippocampus dependent), Nondeclarative (things you know that you can show by doing; hippocampus independent)
- Trait mindfulness (Exams are considered tests of declarative LTM)
Patient HM
- What brain region removed
- What amnesia
- Hippocampus
- Anterograde amnesia (no new declarative memory)
Memory is subject to what pressures (6)
Motivation for the task
Attention
Stress lvl
Affect (anxiety and depression)
Aging
Disorders (traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, neurodegenerative disease)
How is long term mindfulness meditation associated with w/ mindfulness, state anxiety, memory?
Can short programs (~4-10 days) impact WM and cognition thru verbal fluency and digital symbol modality tasks?
More trait mindfulness, lower state anxiety, increased memory vividness/specificity
Yes - Improves WM and cognition in healthy individuals
- Meditation group performed better at session 4
Meditation impact on stroop performance and recognition memory
- Problem
Shows improvement
- But both control and meditation didn’t start equal
- May have been that controls got worse while meditators remained stable
Meditation vs Nutrition impact in GRE (graduate record examination) scores?
Mindfulness shows improved diff on verbal GRE and larger diff on WM capacity
Task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs)
- Increase during what states and impairs what
- Impact of meditation
- During negative affect states, impairs memory and attention
- Allows better filtering of irrelevant thoughts, reducing interference and improving performance
Limitations of meditation on memory studies:
- Motor memory
- WEIRD
- Nondeclarative STM acquired when learning motor skills enhanced w/ meditation but not studied; Usually focus on verbal STM
- Studies come from university students and older adults only (other age groups may be impacted differently)
Meditation impact on job performance
- Problem?
- Positively related to work engagement, work satisfaction, self-reported work performance
- Could be explained by effects on mood, but no actual objective evidence yet only subjective
According to meta-analyses, what is the largest and most consistent effect of meditation?
Subjective cognitive functioning
Yerkes-Dodson Law
- Meditation impacts what to regulate memory when there’s extreme stress
- Mindfulness meditation training vs Relaxation training (active control)
Moderate arousal leads to highest performance in difficult task, decreases w/ high stress
- Reduces excessive glucocorticoids to moderate amount to produce normal memory and avoid impairment
- Meditation group improves and deals w/ stressors better, relaxation group shows natural decline in memory over time
Stress resiliency
- Working memory capacity vs practice time in military (Jha et al. study)
PANAS (positive affect/negative affect schedule)
- Lower negative affect = ?
MBSR impact on well-being, executive function, and WM capacity in surgery residents (doctors)
- Preserve function in stress (memory and cognition)
- Military controls and low practice show decline; high practice shows improvement and increases WM w/ practice time
= Higher OSPAN score
- Caused by meditation
- All showed enhancement
