Stimulus or response based sequence learning is determined by temporal placement of a preceding focused attention meditation
Date
2016
Authors
Chan, R.W.
Immink, M.A.
Lushington, K.
Mosewich, A.D.
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Conference item
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2016 North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity Conference, 2016, vol.38, iss.S52, pp.1-1
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2016 North American Society for Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity Conference (15 Jun 2016 - 18 Jun 2016 : Montreal, Canada)
Abstract
Cognitive control processes that regulate attention, perception, and memory systems influence whether motor sequence learning and representation is primarily stimulus or response oriented. Since cognitive control processes are shared amongst goal-directed tasks, adoption of stimulus or response based sequence learning might be influenced by preceding cognitive tasks. The potential to prime stimulus or response based sequence learning modes was investigated in the present experiment through pre-training exposure to a focused attention meditation technique. Prior to a serial reaction time task (SRTT), 36 meditation naive adults experienced one of three experimental conditions. The MED group completed the 20-minute meditation immediately before training while the MED-D group received a 20-minute delay between meditation and training. No meditation was provided to the NoMED group prior to SRTT. All groups demonstrated significant reaction time (RT) reductions due to the second order conditional (SOC) sequence embedded in SRTT blocks. Significant group performance differences were revealed only in the final SOC block. Here, RT was significantly longer for the NoMED group than the MED and MED-D groups, which did not differ significantly. A comparison of performance between the final SOC block and a subsequent random sequence block revealed a significantly greater RT increase for the MED-D group than the other two groups while RT increase was significantly greater for the NoMED group than the MED group. After completion of the SRTT, percent recall of the SOC sequence was significantly lower for the MED group than the MED-D and NoMED groups, which did not differ significantly. As an attention orienting task, meditation appears to promote subsequent sequence performance, particularly in later task stages. However, these performance benefits are primarily due to stimulus- based planning when meditation immediately precedes sequence learning whereas a delay between meditation and sequence learning allows for performance gains due to greater response-based planning.
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Copyright 2016 North American Society for the Psychology of Sport and Physical Activity