Presentation Information
[P2-12]Embodying the expanded moment: the role of bodily awareness in temporal production during meditation-like attentional states
*Ludovica Ortame1,2, Michele Pellegrino2, Joseph Glicksohn3,4, Patrizio Paoletti2, Fabio Marson5, Stafno Lasaponara1,6, Maria Sofia Romano1, Fabrizio Doricchi1,6, Filippo Carducci1, Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan2 (1. Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), 2. Research Institute of Neuroscience, Education and Didactics (RINED) (Italy), 3. Bar-Ilan University (Israel), 4. The Leslie and Susan Gonda (Goldschmied) Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan (Israel), 5. University of Milano-Bicocca (Italy), 6. RCCS Fondazione Santa Lucia (Italy))
Keywords:
Time,Attention,Awareness,Meditation,Interoception
In a world going at an increasingly faster pace, leading to higher attentional demands, there is a growing need to understand how attentional states influence time perception and how one can achieve a more self-regulated experience of time. The literature that suggests that meditation affect subjective time shows conflicting results (Morin & Grondin, 2024). This could be due to the challenge of investigating temporal tasks during meditation without interfering with the practice itself. In the current study we therefore examined temporal productions (TP) tasks during meditation-like attentional states. This study is, to our knowledge, the first to assess time perception during attentional states associated with contemplative practices without requiring actual meditation. Drawing on the Sphere Model of Consciousness (Paoletti & Ben-Soussan, 2019) and the hierarchy of meditation types (Laukkonen & Slagter, 2021), we hypothesized a gradual slowing down of TP across three conditions: (1) a simple TP; (2) focused attention on an external visual stimulus; and (3) longest TP in the stronger bodily condition. Participants (n=43) underwent the three conditions requiring to perform a TP task while a bistable figure (BF) appeared on the screen. During the (1) simple condition participants completed the TP task while just looking at the figure; (2) focused attention condition, they were additionally asked to focus on one feature of BF; (3) focused attention and monitoring condition, participants were divided into two groups based on additional requests: namely to furtherly focus on either their own breath or on rhythmic sounds. Results revealed progressively longer produced durations from the simple to more embodied condition, with stronger effects in breath group. These results highlight the role of bodily awareness when assessing TP, and suggest that more embodied states are associated with a slowing down of subjective time.