Investigating the Phenomenological Matrix of Mindfulness-related Practices from a Neurocognitive Perspective

By Antoine Lutz, Amishi P. Jha, J. Dunne, Clifford D. Saron. American Psychologist, 2015

601 citations recorded by the source corpus.

There has been a great increase in literature concerned with the effects of a variety of mental training regimes that generally fall within what might be called contemplative practices, and a majority of these studies have focused on mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation practices can be conceptualized as a set of attention-based, regulatory and self-inquiry training regimes cultivated for various ends, including well-being and psychological health. This article examines the construct of mindfulness in psychological research and reviews recent, non-clinical work in this area. Instead of proposing a single definition of mindfulness, we interpret it as a continuum of practices involving states that can be mapped into a multidimensional phenomenological matrix which itself can be expressed in a neurocognitive framework. This phenomenological matrix of mindfulness is presented as a heuristic to guide formulation of next-generation research hypotheses from both cognitive/behavioral and neuroscientific perspectives. In relation to this framework, we review selected findings on mindfulness cultivated through practices in both traditional and research settings, and we conclude by identifying significant gaps in the literature and outlining new directions for research.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/421ac9dd0b08d31ee5693f022e2ee9233f90875e

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Citations in the corpus

Improving Methodological Standards in Behavioral Interventions for Cognitive Enhancement (2019, background): “various types of meditative practices (Davidson and Dahl 2017; Lutz et al. 2015).”
Mind The Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation (2017, unknown): “The first is to use a multimodal approach wherein first-and third-person (i.e., neurobiological and/or behavioral) assessments are used to mutually inform and identify one another (cf. Lutz et al., 2015; Lutz et al., 2002).”
Mechanisms of Mindfulness Training: Monitor and Acceptance Theory (MAT) (2016, background): “And, as mentioned previously, other mechanistic models of mindfulness training describe additional underlying processes that may be equally important in fostering mindfulness and influencing its associated outcomes (e.g., Lutz et al., 2015).”