Chan Russell W, Lushington Kurt, Immink Maarten A
School of Health Sciences, Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia; Centre for Cognitive and Systems Neuroscience, Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
School of Psychology, Social Work and Social Policy, Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia.
Acta Psychol (Amst). 2018 Nov;191:87-100. doi: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2018.09.003. Epub 2018 Sep 18.
Motor sequence learning is considered the result of the outflow of information following cognitive control processes that are shared by other goal-directed behaviours. Emerging evidence suggests that focused-attention meditation (FAM) establishes states of enhanced cognitive control, that then exert top-down control biases in subsequent unrelated tasks. With respect to sequence learning, a single-session of FAM has been shown to entrain stimulus-dependent forms of sequential behaviour in meditation naïve individuals. In the present experiment, we compared single-session effects of FAM and a computerised attention task (CAT) to test if FAM-induced enhanced top-down control is generally comparable to cognitive tasks that require focused attention. We also investigated if effort, arousal or pleasure associated with FAM, or CAT explained the influence of these tasks on sequence learning. Relative to a rest-only control condition, both FAM and CAT resulted in shorter reaction time (RT) in a serial reaction time task (SRTT), and this enhanced RT performance was associated with higher reliance on stimulus-based planning as opposed to sequence representation formation. However, following FAM, a greater rate of improvement in RT performance was observed in comparison to both CAT and control conditions. Neither effort, arousal nor pleasure associated with FAM or CAT explained SRTT performance. These findings were interpreted to suggest that the effect of FAM states on increased top-down control during sequence learning is based on the focused attention control feature of this meditation. FAM states might be associated with enhanced cognitive control to promote the development of more efficient stimulus-response processing in comparison to states induced by other attentional tasks.
运动序列学习被认为是认知控制过程输出信息的结果，这些认知控制过程与其他目标导向行为所共有的。新出现的证据表明，专注注意力冥想（FAM）能建立增强认知控制的状态，进而在随后不相关的任务中施加自上而下的控制偏差。关于序列学习，单次FAM已被证明能在冥想新手个体中引发依赖刺激的序列行为形式。在本实验中，我们比较了FAM和计算机化注意力任务（CAT）的单次效应，以测试FAM诱导的增强自上而下控制是否通常与需要专注注意力的认知任务相当。我们还研究了与FAM或CAT相关的努力、唤醒或愉悦感是否能解释这些任务对序列学习的影响。相对于仅休息的对照条件，FAM和CAT在序列反应时任务（SRTT）中均导致反应时（RT）缩短，且这种RT表现的增强与对基于刺激的计划的更高依赖相关，而非与序列表征形成相关。然而，与CAT和对照条件相比，FAM后观察到RT表现有更大的改善率。与FAM或CAT相关的努力、唤醒或愉悦感均无法解释SRTT表现。这些发现被解释为表明FAM状态在序列学习过程中对增强自上而下控制的影响基于这种冥想的专注注意力控制特征。与其他注意力任务诱导的状态相比，FAM状态可能与增强的认知控制相关，以促进更高效的刺激-反应处理的发展。
