THE INFLUENCE OF MEDITATION ON MENTAL IMAGERY PRECISION

Abstract

This study examined whether people who routinely engage in tasks that require mental imagery have greater mental imagery precision. Specifically, the study tested whether meditation is related to mental imagery precision by comparing non-meditators (control group) with people who practice focused-attention meditation (FAM) and loving-kindness meditation (LKM). Participants also indicated how long they had been practicing meditation. Precision was measured by using the motion aftereffect (MAE) as an objective measure and the VVIQ as a subjective measure. For the MAE, participants imagined visual motion and then determined whether moving dots on a screen were going upward or downward. To further examine the consequences of greater mental imagery precision from meditation, participants completed questionnaires measuring their compassion, empathy, and authenticity. Meditation type had no significant effect on mental imagery precision, nor did the amount of experience a person had with meditation. Further, compassion and authenticity were not correlated with the MAE, but compassion was correlated with the subjective measure of mental imagery precision (the VVIQ). Furthermore, three of the four subscales of the empathy measure (empathic concern (EC), fantasy (FS), and personal distress (PD)) were negatively correlated with the MAE. Together, the results do not support the hypothesis that meditation trains mental imagery precision, but they do reveal interesting relationships between objective measures of mental imagery and empathy, as well as subjective measures of mental imagery and compassion. These findings help us to better understand the potential role of mental imagery in skills like compassion and empathy.