The effectiveness of mindfulness meditation on time perception using a temporal bisection task in a healthy female student population in Tehran

A recent study was conducted to investigate the effects of mindfulness on time perception using a group experimental method.

143 undergraduate students with random control variables, age 18-24 years, minimum diploma, no history of mindfulness exercises, with normal or modified vision to normal (according to the subject) and right-handed were randomly selected and then filling the Freiburg questionnaire. 87 females with a mean age of 19.2 who were moderate in terms of mindfulness ability, subjects whose scores were between (-1Z - + 1Z), were led to the next stage.The number of participants with primary control variables was 87 females with a mean age of 19.2. Of these, 17 did not have the necessary cooperation to continue the research process, and canceled their interviews. The remaining 70 people were invited for structured clinical interviews for DSM-5 (SCID-5-CV) disorders. If there were no major psychiatric disorders, neurological disorders and other systemic diseases, the subjects were selected from the student population. There were 31 of them and 16 people were randomly divided into experimental and 15 control groups.The experimental group listened to a 13-minute mindfulness audio file session and practiced it. A neutral audio file was presented to the control group. The temporal bisection task was presented before and after the implementation of the independent variable and its findings were recorded. Then, with ANCOVA MANCOVA method, we examined the significant difference between the two groups in terms of the percentage of long responses in different conditions of temporal bisection task, Bisection point (Bp) measure, and the measure of the behavioral variable of reaction time.
The temporal bisection task was designed by the researcher to assess the time perception and processing the temporal information of the tests. In this task, subjects are asked to compare the visual temporal stimuli presented with the two reference stimuli "short" and "long" that they memorized. In this task, stimuli with duration (400, 600, 800, 1000, 1200, 1400, 1600 milliseconds) are presented randomly. These stimuli are presented as a block of 126 trails including 18 trails from each stimulus. the subject is asked to classify the presented temporal stimuli into two categories: "short" and "long".

The experimental group scored significantly lower in Bp measure than the control group. The bisection point in time is the period of time in which the percentage of long responses is equal to 50% of the cases, calculated for each subject at each stage. Also, the percentage of Plongs in this group increased significantly compared to the control group, this significant difference was observed especially in condition 5 in the experimental group. Long responses are the ratio of the long responses that the subject gives to the stimuli presented or at different time intervals. Which indicates an overestimation of time following the effect of mindfulness training. In this study, the measure of the behavioral variable of reaction time, which is a behavioral indicator of improving the decision-making process, was also measured. Reaction time is the time between the presentation of the visual stimulus to the time of the subjectschr('39') response to each of the visual stimuli, statistical analysis of the comparison of this index in different test conditions and in the two groups no significant difference was observed between the experimental and control groups.

The results of this study were analyzed based on the hypothesis that mindfulness overestimates time by decreasing the level of arousal and increasing the sources of attention to internal stimuli. To investigate the effect of mindfulness in the decision-making process, it seems that evaluation and spectral analysis of brain wave changes Behavioral responses are essential.Ethical consent form approved by Tabriz University was taken from all subjects and the form was sent to the appendix. The Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology of Tabriz University does not currently provide an ethical code-based identifier for research.