Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1976,43, 303-309.

Perceprual and Motor Skills 1976

TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION AND FINE PERCEPTUAL-MOTOR SKILL1 L. R.

T. WILLIAMS AND P. G. HERBERT University of Otago?

Summary.-30 college male meditators had a 20-min. meditation followed by a 6-min. waking phase prior to 5-min. continuous practice on the pursuit rotor task. This was followed by a 4-min. rest then a further 2-min. of pursuit rotor practice. A similar group of college males who were non-meditators ( N = 30) followed the same procedures except that instead of meditating they sat quietly for the initial 20-mia period. The expectations that Transcendental Meditation would ( a ) facilitate learning and performance; ( b ) cause less within-subject variability; and ( c ) cause less reactive inhibition, were not upheld by the resulc;. With the exception of performance, which was significantly lower for the meditators, the two groups were no different. Thus, it appears thac certain reported physiological and psychological benefits thac are attributed to the practice of Transcendental Meditation (such as less anxiety, greater consistency, more awareness, alertness, and attention) are not manifested in the present behavioral test of perceptual-motor function. In fact, in terms of performance, the meditators seemed to he at a disadvantage.

Transcendencal Meditation (TM) is a simple mental technique of deep relaxation brought to the Western world by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It involves sitting with the eyes closed and focussing the mind passively inwards on a repeated sound for 20 min. twice a day. The technique has been defined as "turning the attention inwards towards the subtle levels of a thought until the mind . . . arrives at the source of the thought" (Mahesh Yogi, 1969). Basic goals of the system include becoming more receptive to internal stimuli and developing a greater focus of attention for a particular task. Recent evidence that indicates support for the idea that the practice of medication leads to such changes in perceptual style has been provided by Pelletier (1974) who found thac after 3 mo. of practice, meditators demonstrated increased field independence measured by greater accuracy on the embedded-figures and rod-and-frame tests. A frequent claim made by meditators is that they have an increased awareness of their surroundings and the finding that meditators appeared to lack habituation to alpha blocking seems to be consistent with these claims (Anand, Chhina, & Singh, 1961). Furthermore, the evidence seems to be in accordance with the meditators' aim of maintaining awareness without concentration and mental control. For example, Wallace, Benson, and Wilson (1971) have shown that the physiological changes during meditation characterize a wakeful hypometabolic physiologic state. 'Supported by Grant No. 37-414 from the University of Otago Research Committee. aSchool of Physical Education, University of Otago, P. 0.Box 56, Dunedin, New Zealand.

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The question of whether or not the increased alertness developed by Transcendental Meditation would be reflected in simple reaction time was investigated by Appelle and Oswald (1974). They found that meditators reacted significantly faster than other subjects and demonstrated a significant decrease in intra-individual variance. However, while the study seems to support the idea that greater alertness is developed by meditation and may be reflected in a simple reactiontime task, some OF the results may be questioned. For example, it is not dear why the non-meditating groups showed a learning effect throughout the 50 trials prior to the experimental condition while the meditating group showed none. Moreover, the learning trends present were very prolonged. For a simple keypress reaction task one would expect most of the learning to occur within the first 10 trials (Norrie, 1967). These findings, therefore, should be viewed with caution. In addition to the claim OF increased alertness, meditators also claim that Transcendental Meditation leads to a development of emotional stability and less susceptibility to the decremental effects of stress. Orme-Johnson (1973) investigated the relationship between Transcendental Meditation and autonomic stability by using three physiological indices of stress and repeated presentations of a noxious tone. H e found that in comparison to non-meditators, meditators made fewer spontaneous GSRs (galvanic skin responses), exhibited faster GSR habituation and made Fewer multiple responses during habituation. It was concluded that meditators possessed greater autonomic stability in response to stress. In a study of psychological stability, Hjelle (1974) found that experienced meditators were significantly more internally controlled and less anxious than beginning meditators. It should be noted, however, that, except for the study of reaction time (Appelle & Oswald, 1974), the literature apparently contains no other study of the relationship between the practice of meditation and perceptual-motor learning and performance. In viewing the available evidence it seems reasonable to suggest that if practising meditation increases attention and alertness, improves reaction time and develops greater autonomic stability, more consistency and less anxiety, then these changes should be reflected in learning and performance OF a perceptual-motor skill. The purpose of the present study was to examine this general question. However, while firm hypotheses cannot be advanced, a number of specific expectations may be stated. Firstly, with regard to the effects on attention, alertness and reaction time, it was expected that in comparison to non-meditators, meditators should demonstrate more learning and a higher level of performance on a continuous perceptual-motor tracking task involving fine motor skill. Secondly, since the evidence regarding the development of increased autonomic stability, within-individual consistency and less anxiety is both physiological (Orme-Johnson, 1973) and psychological (Appelle & Oswald, 1974; Hjelle, 1974), it might be expected that in learning a novel perceptual-motor task,

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meditators should exhibit less intra-individual variability than non-meditators. Furthermore, the notion that meditators are more resistant to stress implies that in terms of Hull's postulate of work-inhibition (1943), it would be expected that for a given amount of work, meditators should accumulate less reactive inhibition ( I R ) than non-meditators.

Thirty male volunteers from the University of Otago Students International Meditation Society who had been practising meditation from 2 to 13 mo. ( M = 6 mo.) formed the meditation group. The non-meditation group consisted of 30 male volunteers selected from the college population on a random basis. The groups were similar with respect to age which ranged from 17-26 yr. (M = 21.1 yr.) and 18-26 yr. ( M = 20.3 yr.) for the two groups respectively. Apparatas and Procedure A standard rotary pursuit task with a target speed of 60 rpm was used as the fine motor skill. Prior to testing, all Ss were naive to the task. Each practice session consisted of continuous tracking and time-on-target scores were measured for each 10-sec. trial by two Standard Electric .Ol-sec. timers which were electronically controlled so that they were activated for alternate 10-sec. periods. Each meditation subject began with a 20-min. meditation session which was followed by a 6-min. waking phase (still in the seated position). S was then taken to another room where 5-min. continuous practice on the pursuit rotor was given. The time between the end of che waking phase and the commencement of the task was approximately 2 min. After this first practice session, S sat and rested for 4 min. before a further 2 min. of conrinuous tracking practice was given. The non-meditating Ss followed the same procedures except that instead of meditating they were instructed to "sit quietly."

RESULTS Perf ormunce Mean performance curves for the two groups are presented in Fig. 1. The non-meditators scored consistently higher than the meditators, with the average difference across both sessions amounting to 25%. Groups X trials analyses of variance were conducted for the prerest and postrest practice scores and in both cases groups was a significant main effect for prerest performance (F1,58 = 4.43, p < .05) and for postrest performance (F1.58 = 6.41, p < .05). The main effects for trials were also significant (Fso,lsa? = 14.38 and F11,638 = 9.82, p .05, for the prerest and postrest scores respectively) and indicated that both groups changed in performance with practice. Although the interaction of groups X trials for prerest performance indicated no difference between the trends (P20,1682 = 0.63, p > .05), th'IS was not


.05) indicates that for the interaction of groups X trials the meditators did not accumulate less IR than the non-meditators.

Learning Learning was defined as the amount of improvement over initial performance and two methods were used to compare the groups. For prerest learning, the comparison was provided by the interaction for groups X trials, that this was nonsignificant indicates there were no differences between meditators and nonmeditators in the amount of learning. The second method used learning scores calculated as the difference between the average of Trials 1, 2, and 3 and the average of Trials 40, 41, and 42. Again the differences were not significant ( t 5 s = 0.88, 9 > .05). Intra-individual Variability The group patterns for within-Ss variability are presented in Fig. 2. The values were obtained by partitioning the total variance between adjacent trials (S,?) into inter-individual ( S f 2 ) and intra-individual components ( S t ) , using the technique described by Henry ( 1959). Visual inspection of the graph indicates the trends are very similar to those previously reported for the pursuit rotor (e.g., Alderman, 1968), there being a slight linear upward slant with no reflection of any influence of the large changes in performance level that occurred p ~ s t r e s t . ~While the differences between the means of the average values 'Alderman's Reference 9, which concerns changes in intravariance during learning, was published in Jorrrnal of Motor Behavior, 1971, 3, 78-95.

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of S4 were in the expected direction in that those for the meditating group were slightly lower than those for the control group (0.60 vs 0.65 and 0.64 vs 0.71 for pre- and postrest practice, respectively) the differences were not scatistically significant since tFjs= 1.45 ( p > .05) for the prerest trials and $20 = 0.52 ( p > .05) for the poscrest data. It should be pointed out, however, that it is evident by inspection that relative variability ( S t / M ) is larger for the meditating group which is contrary to the expectation chat meditators would be more consistent.

D~scuss~o~ The results do not support the expectacion that performance and learning of a fine perceptual-motor skill would be facilitated by practicing Transcendental Meditation. It seems that, if any improvement in attention, alertness, and reaction time accrued from meditation, then these effects were not reflected in the present task. Indeed, the converse appears to hold. Namely, that the practice of Transcendental Meditation impairs performance on the pursuit-rotortracking task. Moreover, this impairment showed little sign of lessening with practice. While it is possible that the groups were of unequal ability to begin with, this seems unlikely since it might be expected that with 30 Ss per group, such effects would be minimized-particularly since the two groups were not chosen in any way that could conceivably have biased the meditating group towards poorer performance. The lack of differentiation between learning scores indicates that the rates of improvernenc were similar. It might appear therefore that the Transcendental Meditation session could have acted as a performance variable but not as a learning variable. However, the continued lower performance level of meditators during postrest practice tends to confuse the issue. A clearer answer would be provided by having a much longer rest period which would allow for any prolonged effects of the meditation session to dissipate. The expectacion that meditators would be more resistant to the effects of reactive inhibition was not upheld

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by the data. This finding indicates that any increase in autonomic stability that is produced by practising meditation is not reflected in the performance of this continuous tracking task. An interesting feature of the postrest performance is that, while the amount of reminiscence was similar for both groups, the non-meditators showed a greater increase between Trials 31 and 32. Amrnons (1947) has attributed such postrest upswings to the need for S to regain the postural "set" acquired during prerest practice. In contrast Eysenck (1960) holds that the upswing is due to the consolidation of learning and to the extinction of conditioned inhibition (SIR) which may be described a s the habit of not responding and which ceases when the first involuntary rest pause occurs. Although the present data do not allow a comparison of the two views, it is noteworthy that each one has implications regarding the performance of the two groups. Ammons' warmup-decrement, for example, suggests that the postural adjustments formed by the meditators during previous practice were not as advantageous in terms of performance than those formed by the non-meditators. In terms of Eysenck's postulation, the results suggest that in addition to the occurrence of less consolidation of learning, the meditators experienced involuntary rest pauses at a lower level of performance. In contrast to the findings of Appelle and Oswald (1974) and to the expectations generated by the physiological and psychological evidence of OrmeJohnson (1973) and Hjelle (1974), the present study found no differences in variability within Ss. Thus, ir appears there is no behavioral evidence to support the idea that practising meditation develops greater consistency in the performance of a perceptual-motor task. In conclusion, it seems that, while there is some evidence which lends support to the idea that the practice of Transcendental Meditation leads to benefits such as increased attention, alertness, awareness, autonomic stability, and consistency, the present study found that the concomitant expectations were not fulfilled during the acquisition of a fine perceptual-motor skill. Instead, the evidence indicated that the effects of Transcendental Meditation on performance were decremental. REFERENCES

ALDERMAN, R. B. Reminiscence effects on inter- and intra-individual differences in pursuit rotor performance.

Research Quarterly, 1968, 39, 423-427.

AMMONS, R. B. Acquisition of motor skill: I. Quantitative analysis and theoretical formu-

lation. Psychological Review, 1947, 54, 263-281. & SINGH,B. Some aspects of electroencephalographic studies in yogis. Electroencephalography and Clinical Neurophysiology, 1961, 13, 452-456. APPELLE,S., & OSWALD, L. E. Simple reaction time as a function of alertness and prior mental activity. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1974. 38, 1263-1268. EYSENCK, H. J. A three-factor theory of reminiscence. British Jowncrl of Psychology, 1965, 56, 163-181.

ANAND,B. K,CHHINA,G. S.,

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HENRY,F. M. Reliability, measurement error, and intra-individual differences. Research Quarterly, 1959, 30, 21-24. HJELLE, L. A. Transcendental Meditation and psychological health Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1974, 39,623-628. HULL,C. L. Principles o f behavior. New York: Appleton-Century, 1943. MAHESH,M. Y. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi on the Bhagavad-Gita: cr new t+anslation and commentary. Baltimore, MD: Penguin Books, 1969. NORRIE,M. L. Practice effects on reaction latency for simple and complcx movements. Research Quartmly, 1967, 38, 79-85. ORME-JOHNSON,D. W. Autonomic stability and Transcendental Meditation. Psychosomatic Medicine, 1973, 3 5 , 341-349. PELLETIER,K R. Influence of Transcendental Meditation upon autokinetic perception. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1974, 39, 1031-1034. WALLACE,R. K, BENSON,H., & WILSON,A. F. A wakeful hypometabolic physiologic state. American Journal o f Physiology, 1971, 221, 795-799. Accepted May 26, 1976.

Transcendental Meditation and fine perceptual-motor skill.

Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1976,43, 303-309. Perceprual and Motor Skills 1976 TRANSCENDENTAL MEDITATION AND FINE PERCEPTUAL-MOTOR SKILL1 L. R. T...
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