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Opening the Contemplative Mind in the Classroom — Journal of Transformative Education
The present article offers educators a rationale for returning the contemplative to education by summarizing research on the impact of contemplation on learning and behavior. It then provides a range of specific approaches for teachers that can be easily integrated into existing curriculum from elementary to university levels.
(tags: contemplative_practice mindfulness education)
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The Buddha’s Extra Scoop: Neural Correlates of Mindfulness and Clinical Sport Psychology
Recent studies using neuroimaging technologies offer evidence that ancient beliefs about the benefits (e.g., enhanced attention, increased distress tolerance) associated with mindfulness practice and other forms of meditation may be supported by identifiable neuroanatomical changes in the brain. Although it is too early to make probative statements regarding exactly how and why contemplative practices affect the structure and activity of the brain, sport psychologists may want to consider the potential implications of the findings that have begun to emerge from this neural correlates research. The goal of this article is to (a) review the findings from the principal studies of contemplative practice that have employed measures of neuronal activity (e.g., fMRI, EEG) and (b) examine the potential relevance of these studies to the treatment of psychological disorders among athletes and the enhancement of athletic performance.
(tags: sports neuroscience mindfulness)
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ScienceDirect - Psychology of Sport and Exercise : Relationships between mindfulness, flow dispositions and mental skills adoption: A cluster analytic approach
“[A]thletes’ flow dispositions and mental skills adoption could be differentiated using mindfulness. The findings have implications towards the understanding of flow and mental skills adoption within sport psychology.”
(tags: mindfulness sports psychology)
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Mechanisms of mindfulness - Shapiro - 2005 - Journal of Clinical Psychology - Wiley Online Library
Recently, the psychological construct mindfulness has received a great deal of attention. The majority of research has focused on clinical studies to evaluate the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions. This line of research has led to promising data suggesting mindfulness-based interventions are effective for treatment of both psychological and physical symptoms. However, an equally important direction for future research is to investigate questions concerning mechanisms of action underlying mindfulness-based interventions. This theoretical paper proposes a model of mindfulness, in an effort to elucidate potential mechanisms to explain how mindfulness affects positive change. Potential implications and future directions for the empirical study of mechanisms involved in mindfulness are addressed.
(tags: mindfulness psychology)
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Mindfulness: Theoretical Foundations and Evidence for its Salutary Effects - Psychological Inquiry: An International Journal for the Advancement of Psychological Theory
Interest in mindfulness and its enhancement has burgeoned in recent years. In this article, we discuss in detail the nature of mindfulness and its relation to other, established theories of attention and awareness in day-to-day life. We then examine theory and evidence for the role of mindfulness in curtailing negative functioning and enhancing positive outcomes in several important life domains, including mental health, physical health, behavioral regulation, and interpersonal relationships. The processes through which mindfulness is theorized to have its beneficial effects are then discussed, along with proposed directions for theoretical development and empirical research.
(tags: mindfulness psychology)
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The Cognitive Benefits of Interacting With Nature — Psychological Science [sub req]
We compare the restorative effects on cognitive functioning of interactions with natural versus urban environments. Attention restoration theory (ART) provides an analysis of the kinds of environments that lead to improvements in directed-attention abilities. Nature, which is filled with intriguing stimuli, modestly grabs attention in a bottom-up fashion, allowing top-down directed-attention abilities a chance to replenish. Unlike natural environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car), making them less restorative. We present two experiments that show that walking in nature or viewing pictures of nature can improve directed-attention abilities as measured with a backwards digit-span task and the Attention Network Task, thus validating attention restoration theory.
(tags: psychology attention memory cognition nature)
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Book Review - Hamlet’s Blackberry - By William Powers - NYTimes.com
Powers suggests that evolutionary programming may be partly responsible for the drive that has many of us constantly checking our digital screens. We are wired by nature, he notes, to pay attention to new stimuli, thereby helping us to respond quickly to predators or to nab a potential meal. The biochemical effect of the iPhone ping, in fact, might be injecting my brain with what one scientist calls a “dopamine squirt.” In other words, marketers have told us we must be connected all the time, and our brains have done the rest. The author worries that our homes, the traditional shelter from the crowd, have been invaded to the point where we may be in danger of no longer connecting deeply with our families, our books and our thoughts. But Powers, a former staff writer at The Washington Post who has written extensively on media and technology, is not simply an earnest foreteller of doom.
(tags: media technology attention cognition psychology digital_culture)
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This paper reports on a decade of research and development in relation to the concept of slowness in management, specifically relating to the design of working spaces and learning methods for knowledge work.
(tags: contemplative_practice office design workspace)
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“Edward Bowles and Radio Engineering at MIT, 1920-1940,” HSPS 20:2 (1990), 313-337.
My second published article, on a now little-known figure in the history of technology. Not a bad piece for a graduate student, I guess. (Not that I remember anything but the broadest outlines of the piece 20 years later….)
(tags: history_of_science mit)
