Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, Vol 10(4), Dec 2023, 346-367; doi:10.1037/cns0000254
Studies that examined the impact of meditation on the subjective perception of time have produced contradictory results. Sometimes time seems to expand for meditators, other times to shorten. Previous explanations used (different) current theories of timing to explain these results. In contrast, we propose a theoretical account that starts with a model of meditation derived from early Buddhism and augment it with current theories of time perception. This augmented Buddhist model of meditation (ABMM) predicts that the felt time spent in meditation depends crucially on the kind of meditation technique: Time should in retrospect feel shorter when meditators continuously focus their attention on a given object of meditation than when they have their attention openly monitoring ever-changing perceptions, cognitions, and emotions. However, the length and accuracy of time estimates should not be noticeably influenced by the kind of meditation, and whether meditators are informed about an upcoming timing task beforehand should affect only beginners and not advanced meditators. First, we use the ABMM to reexamine the seemingly contradictory results from previous research and then report on the first study that directly tested the model. Both the results of previous research and the findings of the current study are largely consistent with the predictions derived from the ABMM. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved)