Eknath Easwaran’s Mantram and Passage Meditation as Applied Indian Psychology: Psycho-Spiritual and Health Effects

We review the life and legacy of Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) from the perspective of modern and Indian Psychology. A Kerala-born professor of English literature, Easwaran in 1959 travelled to the USA where he taught a system of eight spiritual practices known as passage meditation (PM). Its characteristic features include its meditative focus on memorized inspirational passages and using mantram repetition as a primarily “portable” practice throughout the day. The PM method is distinctive in emphasizing the principle, otherwise neglected in the modern psychology of meditation, that “we become what we meditate on”—a principle that possesses a basis in traditional Indian sources that include the Vedas, Puranas, Adi ?a?kara, and Ramakrishna Paramahamsa. Two major programs of empirical research have evaluated Easwaran’s practices, each publishing multiple randomized controlled trials. We summarize findings from (i) studies of the full PM program, and (ii) studies of the Mantram Repetition Program (MRP), based on three of the eight PM points. Randomized evidence links each program to reduced stress, improved mental health, improved mindfulness, and increases in various spiritual measures. We describe ways that PM/MRP empirical research has reflected Indian Psychology perspectives, and suggest that Easwaran’s legacy enriches Indian Psychology with added value in at least three ways: emphasizing the importance of the choice of meditative focus, offering universally framed support for devotional (bhakti) orientations to spirituality, and supplying tools for improving how spiritual diversity is addressed in modern institutions such as health care, schools, and other organizations.     

Preferences for Online Mental Health Services Among Australian and Indian Samples: A Cross-Cultural Comparison

Online mental health services provide a point-of-access to mental healthcare that may otherwise be unavailable or limited, particularly in developing countries. Nevertheless, there is a lack of research into individual differences between those who prefer online mental health services and those who prefer traditional in-person services, and whether these differences vary as a function of culture. This study investigated differences in preferences for online or in-person mental health services on e-health literacy, age, education level, and comfort using the internet in a general community sample recruited from Australia and India. A total of 487 participants (31.6% male; mean age?=?33.55, SD?=?12.20, range 18–78), 297 Australians and 190 Indians, completed an online or paper-and-pencil survey. A significant negative relationship between age and e-health literacy was found with younger ages associated with higher e-health literacy. Furthermore, e-health literacy scores were significantly higher for the Australian sample. Age, e-health literacy, country-of-residence, education level, and comfort in using the internet did not predict mental health service preference. The results suggest that preference for in-person or online mental healthcare is independent of demographic and cultural factors and indicate that online mental health services may be acceptable to Indian health service consumers.     

Does Rumination Mediate the Association of Private Prayer,Stress, and Their Interaction with Depression among Christians? A Cross-Sectional Study

Mechanisms underlying significant associations between different types of prayer and depression are unknown. Based on the conceptualization of prayer as stress buffering coping style and the Response Style Theory, we proposed that rumination mediates the association of prayer types and stress with depression. This cross-sectional study (N?=?227 Christians, M_age 41.74, SD 14.82, age range 18–82 years, 76% female) used path modeling to test whether rumination mediated the associations between prayer types and prayer types by stress interactions with depression. Rumination fully mediated the associations of the colloquial and ritual prayer by stress interactions with depressive symptoms, while meditative and petitionary prayer was directly associated with depressive symptoms. Further, petitionary prayer and the ritual prayer by stress interaction were associated with more and not with less rumination and depressive symptoms, respectively. Summarized, first empirical evidence supports an integration of prayer, stress, and rumination into one model of depression. However, the exact nature of their interplay depends on the prayer type. If replicated, our findings allow the integration of prayer into cognitive-behavioral treatment of depression in religious and spiritual clients.     

Spatiotemporal competition and task-relevance shape the spatial distribution of emotional interference during rapid visual processing: Evidence from gaze-contingent eye-tracking

People’s ability to perceive rapidly presented targets can be disrupted both by voluntary encoding of a preceding target and by spontaneous attention to salient distractors. Distinctions between these sources of interference can be found when people search for a target in multiple rapid streams instead of a single stream: voluntary encoding of a preceding target often elicits subsequent perceptual lapses across the visual field, whereas spontaneous attention to emotionally salient distractors appears to elicit a spatially localized lapse, giving rise to a theoretical account suggesting that emotional distractors and subsequent targets compete spatiotemporally during rapid serial visual processing. We used gaze-contingent eye-tracking to probe the roles of spatiotemporal competition and memory encoding on the spatial distribution of interference caused by emotional distractors, while also ruling out the role of eye-gaze in driving differences in spatial distribution. Spontaneous target perception impairments caused by emotional distractors were localized to the distractor location regardless of where participants fixated. But when emotional distractors were task-relevant, perceptual lapses occurred across both streams while remaining strongest at the distractor location. These results suggest that spatiotemporal competition and memory encoding reflect a dual-route impact of emotional stimuli on target perception during rapid visual processing.     

The roles of order,distance, and interstitial items in temporal visual statistical learning

Humans are adept at learning regularities in a visual environment, even without explicit cues to structure and in the absence of instruction—this has been termed “visual statistical learning” (VSL). The nature of the representations resulting from VSL are still poorly understood. In five experiments, we examined the specificity of temporal VSL representations. In Experiments 1A, 1B, and 2, we compared recognition rates of triplets and all embedded pairs to chance. Robust learning of all structures was evident, and even pairs of non-adjacent items in a sequentially presented triplet (AC extracted from a triplet composed of ABC) were recognized at above-chance levels. In Experiment 3, we asked whether people could recognize rearranged pairs to examine the flexibility of learned representations. Recognition of all possible orders of target triplets and pairs was significantly higher than chance, and there were no differences between canonical orderings and their corresponding randomized orderings, suggesting that learners were not dependent upon originally experienced stimulus orderings to recognize co-occurrence. Experiment 4 demonstrates the essential role of an interstitial item in VSL representations. By comparing the learning of quadruplet sets (e.g., ABCD) and triplet sets (e.g., ABC), we found learning of AC and BD in ABCD (quadruplet) sets were better than the learning of AC in ABC (triplet) sets. This pattern of results might result from the critical role of interstitial items in statistical learning. In short, our work supports the idea of generalized representation in VSL and provides evidence about how this representation is structured.     

Continuous flash suppression and monocular pattern masking impact subjective awareness similarly

Peters and Lau (eLife, 4, e09651, 2015) found that when criterion bias is controlled for, there is no evidence for unconscious visual perception in normal observers, in the sense that they cannot directly discriminate a target above chance without knowing it. One criticism of that study is that the visual suppression method used, forward and backward masking (FBM), may be too blunt in the way it interferes with visual processing to allow for unconscious forced-choice discrimination. To investigate this question, we compared FBM directly to continuous flash suppression (CFS) in a two-interval forced-choice task. Although CFS is popular, and may be thought of as a more powerful visual suppression technique, we found no difference in the degree of perceptual impairment between the two suppression types. To the extent that CFS impairs perception, both objective discrimination and subjective awareness are impaired to similar degrees under FBM. This pattern was consistently observed across three experiments in which various experimental parameters were varied. These findings provide evidence for an ongoing debate about unconscious perception: normal observers cannot perform forced-choice discrimination tasks unconsciously.     

Effects of feedback reliability on feedback-related brain activity: A feedback valuation account

Adaptive decision making relies on learning from feedback. Because feedback sometimes can be misleading, optimal learning requires that knowledge about the feedback’s reliability be utilized to adjust feedback processing. Although previous research has shown that feedback reliability indeed influences feedback processing, the underlying mechanisms through which this is accomplished remain unclear. Here we propose that feedback processing is adjusted by the adaptive, top-down valuation of feedback. We assume that unreliable feedback is devalued relative to reliable feedback, thus reducing the reward prediction errors that underlie feedback-related brain activity and learning. A crucial prediction of this account is that the effects of feedback reliability are susceptible to contrast effects. That is, the effects of feedback reliability should be enhanced when both reliable and unreliable feedback are experienced within the same context, as compared to when only one level of feedback reliability is experienced. To evaluate this prediction, we measured the event-related potentials elicited by feedback in two experiments in which feedback reliability was varied either within or between blocks. We found that the fronto-central valence effect, a correlate of reward prediction errors during reinforcement learning, was reduced for unreliable feedback. But this result was obtained only when feedback reliability was varied within blocks, thus indicating a contrast effect. This suggests that the adaptive valuation of feedback is one mechanism underlying the effects of feedback reliability on feedback processing.     

Same-gender distractors are not so easy to reject: ERP evidence of gender categorization

Social categorization appears to be an automatic process that occurs during person perception. Understanding social categorization better is important because mere categorization can lead to stereotype activation and, in turn, to discrimination. In the present study we used a novel approach to examine event-related potentials (ERPs) of gender categorization in the “Who said what?” memory paradigm, thus allowing for a more in-depth understanding of the specific mechanisms underlying identity versus categorization processing. After observing video clips showing a “discussion” among female and male targets, participants were shown individual statements, each accompanied by one of the discussants’ faces. While we measured ERPs, participants had to decide whether or not a given statement had previously been made by the person with the accompanying face. In same-person trials, statements were paired with the correct person, whereas in the distractor trials, either a same-gender or a different-gender distractor was shown. As expected, participants were able to reject different-gender distractors faster than same-gender distractors, and they were more likely to falsely choose yes for a same-gender than for a different-gender distractor. Both findings indicate gender-based categorization. ERPs, analyzed in a 300- to 400-ms time window at occipito-temporal channels, indicated more negative amplitudes for yes responses both for the same person and for same-gender distractors, relative to different-gender distractors. Overall, these results show gender-based categorization even when the task was to assess the identifying information in a gender-neutral context. These findings are interpreted as showing that gender categorization occurs automatically during person perception, but later than race- or age-based categorization.     

Long-term associative learning predicts verbal short-term memory performance

Studies using tests such as digit span and nonword repetition have implicated short-term memory across a range of developmental domains. Such tests ostensibly assess specialized processes for the short-term manipulation and maintenance of information that are often argued to enable long-term learning. However, there is considerable evidence for an influence of long-term linguistic learning on performance in short-term memory tasks that brings into question the role of a specialized short-term memory system separate from long-term knowledge. Using natural language corpora, we show experimentally and computationally that performance on three widely used measures of short-term memory (digit span, nonword repetition, and sentence recall) can be predicted from simple associative learning operating on the linguistic environment to which a typical child may have been exposed. The findings support the broad view that short-term verbal memory performance reflects the application of long-term language knowledge to the experimental setting.     

Pupil dilation as an index of effort in cognitive control tasks: A review

Pupillometry research has experienced an enormous revival in the last two decades. Here we briefly review the surge of recent studies on task-evoked pupil dilation in the context of cognitive control tasks with the primary aim being to evaluate the feasibility of using pupil dilation as an index of effort exertion, rather than task demand or difficulty. Our review shows that across the three cognitive control domains of updating, switching, and inhibition, increases in task demands typically leads to increases in pupil dilation. Studies show a diverging pattern with respect to the relationship between pupil dilation and performance and we show how an effort account of pupil dilation can provide an explanation of these findings. We also discuss future directions to further corroborate this account in the context of recent theories on cognitive control and effort and their potential neurobiological substrates.