It is challenging for many of us to bail ourselves out of so many distractions of these days while reading. You planned to study a bit, you’ve been focusing on some texts, and suddenly you realize your mind hasn’t been where your eyes are all looking at; you’ve been buried in a reverie of something entirely different.
A new study suggests that, practicing meditation can help one improve focus while reading.
“It is challenging for individuals to maintain their attention on ongoing cognitive tasks without being distracted by task-unrelated thought, the study’s authors said.
The wandering mind is thus a considerable obstacle when attention must be maintained over time.
Mental training through meditation has been proposed as an effective method of attenuating the ebb and flow of attention to thoughts and feelings that distract from one’s foremost present goals.”
It took the researchers a one-month intensive vipassanā meditation training program to arrive at their conclusion. Participants of the test were given a reading test having a nonsensical sentences placed within; they were monitored with a control group i.e. along with those who don’t have to practice meditation.
Researchers found that only those who had been practising meditation were able to detect the nonsensical sentences.
“Meditation practitioners across both studies demonstrated greater levels of error monitoring following training, as measured by their ability to detect gross semantic violations in the text, the study’s authors write.
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This suggests that training group participants were more attentive to the story content and ongoing text, allowing them to better detect these salient text discrepancies.”