
Dispositional mindfulness is associated with reduced implicit learning - unicornporn
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053810014001019
======
unicornporn
Original paper:

[http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:1749328:5/comp...](http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:1749328:5/component/escidoc:1760288/1-s2.0-S1053810013000780-main.pdf)

~~~
elpres
In fact, it's not. The paper you've linked is titled "Mindfulness reduces
habitual responding based on implicit knowledge: Evidence from artificial
grammar learning", from September 2012. It may be related, but not the same.

------
incision
A summary for us laypeople [1].

 _' The authors suggest that people who deliberate less are better at implicit
learning because they have a wider span of attention and focus on a wider
variety of stimuli. In turn, this makes them more likely to capture relevant
associations in complex tasks.'_

 _' But they also found several positive correlations between mindfulness and
previously investigated cognitive and psychological health outcomes,
“supporting the idea of a tradeoff in benefit,” Stillman says.'_

1: [http://www.georgetown.edu/research/news/mindfulness-
cognitiv...](http://www.georgetown.edu/research/news/mindfulness-cognitive-
aging-study.html)

~~~
JohnnyBrown
Better: quote the actual authors.

> We therefore tested whether the mindfulness trait predicted a reduction of
> grammatically congruent preferences ... Mindfulness was shown to correlate
> negatively with grammatically congruent responses

> Mindfulness was measured using the Dutch version (de Bruin, Topper, Muskens,
> Bogels, & Kamphuis, 2012) of the 39 item Five Factor Mindfulness
> Questionnaire (FFMQ, Baer et al. (2006)).

> Working memory (WM) performance over sessions was analyzed with repeated-
> measures ANOVA. WM performance (LEVENSHTEIN) was indexed by mean Levenshtein
> distance between target sequence and remembered sequence ... Low Levenshtein
> distances therefore represent good WM performance, and high Levenshtein
> distance poor WM performance.

The WM variable represents mean distance between target sequences subjects
were exposed to before they were told there was a pattern, and the sequences
they generated attempting to recall them after being told there was a pattern.

The phrase, "grammatically congruent responses" appears only in the abstract,
but it probably refers to the same thing as WM.

Sometimes, it's best to let your pattern matcher do its thing. Label your
axes, kids.

------
MarkPNeyer
i spend almost of my time in thought. i've been this way ever since i was a
kid, and i think this is why i was so bad at social skills.

most people learn social skills through implicit-pattern matching. 'when i do
this, that happens' \- with no real structural understanding of _why_. they
implicitly learn patterns like posture, eye contact, facial microexpressions.

that implicit learning is not possible if you are always engaged in conceptual
thought.

~~~
sillysaurus3
_that implicit learning is not possible if you are always engaged in
conceptual thought._

While I agree with you, the paper is saying that mindfulness (being "in the
moment" or aware of your surroundings) results in _reduced_ implicit learning.
That seems to be the opposite of your observation.

Although I have no idea whether "dispositional mindfulness" is different from
"mindfulness," so maybe my comment isn't quite accurate. But if it's any way
related to the colloquial definition of "mindfulness," then the paper is
saying it's negatively correlated with implicit learning.

Is the paper's "implicit learning" the same as the type of learning you're
talking about? I don't know.

~~~
MarkPNeyer
thanks for the clarification. you're right on that.

i've found that my social skills have dramatically improved from trying to
learn them _conceptually_, rather than implicitly. I watched a lot of tv shows
- walking dead, house of cards, game of thrones, breaking bad - and kept
pausing the tv to discuss with my wife _why_ people were acting the ways they
did.

doing this really helped me come to understand a lot of things, like the
importance of staying calm if you want to be respected. apparently
'dispositional mindfulness' is mindfulness as a default state, as opposed to
something practiced intentionally.

going about my day thinking about abstract things constantly seems like the
opposite of dispositional mindfulness. i'll haveh to look further.

~~~
scott_s
Based on your description, it sounds like you may be on the autistic spectrum.
Perhaps reading up on that can give you more insights.

You may also find this book interesting, by a man who was diagnosed with
Asperger's (which is now just said to be on the autistic spectrum) as an
adult, after his wife started picking up on it: [http://www.amazon.com/The-
Journal-Best-Practices-Marriage/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Journal-Best-
Practices-
Marriage/dp/1439189749/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407884946&sr=8-1&keywords=autistic+husband+handbook)

------
TheSisb2
Reduced implicit learning is not in fact a "bad" thing, although we may
quickly assume so at first glance. I suppose if you read the title of this
post and thought "wait what? They're saying mindfulness is bad?" then that
would be an example of where your implicitly acquired knowledge failed to some
extent.

In fact, a common cause of disturbance within people is that they are too
affected by implicit "I did this and that happened" learnings and not of the
true intent/meaning behind actions and reactions.

~~~
sillysaurus3
It seems like only a trained expert can understand what they're saying.

Or, put another way: This paper desperately needs a translator for us laymen.
We could puzzle over what the paper is saying, but hopefully someone in the
field will write a translative comment.

Until then, everyone seems to be making comments based off of what they hope
the paper is saying rather than its true findings. For example, it seems like
the paper claims they administered a grammatical task, and performance on
verbal tasks is a distinct type of learning. Someone can fail their English
exams but still be an amazing artist, for example.

~~~
icegreentea
Well, stuff that you implicitly learn are things that you cannot 'explain'. In
the paper, they say they use sequence learning as their implicit learning
task. In sequence learning, you show some visual stimuli, and the subject
reacts. Depending on the test, the sequence may have underlying structure. I
don't have access to the paper, so I'm speculating here, but its probable that
they used a test with underlying structure, and measured the reaction times of
the subjects. This test essentially tests the subjects 'subconscious' pattern
recognition. And one of the hallmarks of implicit learning is that your skill
is only weakly transferable to other skills. So it might be that only sequence
learning is impaired by mindfullness. Who knows.

As for if implicit learning is 'bad'? Well, it certainly depends on context.
There are definitely large areas where it is preferable to have explicit
knowledge. That said, there are also lots of situation where it simply isn't
feasible to get that explicit knowledge - we must fall back to implicit
learning. For example, language learning is a pretty weird case. As children,
language learning is pretty much mostly implicit - it is entirely possible to
develop into a passable English speaker without being to articulate any of the
grammer rules. Even as adults, we are often told to stop worrying about the
rules, and just get exposure to the language - this too relates to implicit
learning.

~~~
phkahler
The way you describe it, implicit learning is the formation of associations,
pattern matching, and what some call intuition. I've seen great things done
with fact-based x-causes-y deduction as well as intuitive understanding that
is hard to explain. I've also seen cases of each where a person who thinks the
other way would never have found a solution to a problem. I would not discount
implicit learning, nor promote it as "better".

Are we getting at the old right-brain left-brain thing here?

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Implicit or procedural learning refers to learning how to do things like tying
your shoes: It requires considerable cognitive effort and attentive control of
muscles to get right, but eventually, after you've done it many times, you
don't think about it anymore.

Driving is another example: After sufficient experience, you drive without
conscious effort, becoming consciously aware of things only when they exceed
your implicit bounds ("That car is too close, what's that unexpected shape at
the side of the road").

The basic gist of the article is that mindfulness (which essentially makes you
both more aware of and detached from your conscious cognitive efforts) mixes
poorly with learning tasks or activities that are intended to eventually be
performed automagically.

I suppose, I speculate, that the reason for this is that implicit learning
requires you be "all in" attending to the task, but mindfulness would have you
at least partially attending to your attention, so your mind is in fact
distracting itself.

I further speculate that this likely "weakens" the "signal" your brain is
trying to send from the explicitly conscious regions of your brain that are
attending to the new task to the implicit, subconscious regions that will
eventually perform the task, once it has been well learned.

(Just for fun, try to describe to someone in step-by-step detail how you tie
your shoes. Then try tying them while describing what you are doing. Report
back on how many attempts it takes before you succeed.)

~~~
phkahler
I tried very hard for a long time to explain to my daughter how to make
herself go on a swing with no luck. "Lean back, legs out, when going
forward..." Then I sat on the swing next to her and did it myself. She watched
and was doing it herself in about 5 seconds. No idea if anything I had said
helped prepare for that. I think she had seen me swing myself before and
didn't get it, so IDK what clicked.

------
cJ0th
I still don't grasp how a distinction between implicit and explicit learning
can be made. At a first glance, the two words seem to imply that these are two
very different processes. But when I asked myself "Does learning a Karate move
require rather implicit or explicit learning?" the answer is not clear to me.

On the one hand, you have to be fully _focused_ [explicit learning] on the
actual move (What's the angle of my feet?, How high should my fist rise? etc.)
On the other hand, karate instructors always advice "do not __think __about
what you do ", they hence perhaps advice an implicit learning approach. [so,
according to the paper, they don't want you to be mindful - and that sounds
like an oxymoron since karate is about being mindful]

My uneducated guess would be that it requires both kinds of learning at the
same time to the same amount (That's what I would actually consider/define as
mindful learning...)

I would like to understand these concepts better as I guess a lot of
ineffective learning can be ascribed to the "wrong kind of learning".

------
adamzerner
Yes! I've always suspected that this is true.

~~~
droopyEyelids
I believe my first conscious experience of this was when I tried to write a
towers-of-hanoi program.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tower_of_Hanoi)

My 'hands' figured out the algorithm in a minute or two, and could fly through
the stacks without a problem. But when I tried to be mindful enough of what I
was doing to write an algorithm for it, I basically forgot what i was doing,
and had to painstakingly reteach myself.

------
cratermoon
Given that "implicit learning" means, roughly, learning without being aware of
what's being learned, this is expected. The question would be: is this lack of
awareness a good or bad thing?

------
mrcactu5
so the harder you think about it, the less you are able to learn?

~~~
trentonstrong
That's what came to mind first for me as well, but I think it's important to
note that 'mindfulness' as defined in the paper is a specific type of
"thinking harder".

I wonder if there would be similar results if the experiments were performed
with new motor skill acquisition. I know that in my own experience it seems
that a combination of "mindful" practice (especially at the beginning of the
learning process) with "drill" type practice seems to seal the deal most
efficiently. Basically the "engram" theory.

------
alexc05
So they're saying that if you don't pay attention you don't learn?

~~~
PeterWhittaker
Kind of the opposite, really (see my other comment above for more): Learning a
to-be-implicit-eventually task requires near-total attention while you learn
it (tying a shoe, riding a bike), but eventually requires none.

Mindfulness, or paying attention to the fact you are paying attention, would
appear to sufficiently reduce that required near-total attention so as to slow
down the learning process.

When learning to swing the bat at the ball, focus solely on the bat and ball.
Once you can hit the ball without thinking about it, then attempt mindful
inspection of your actions - but not before.

EDIT: s/too/to/above.

------
HNJohnC
"We tested _two_ adult samples using two different sequence learning tasks."

Two? Nothing to see here.

~~~
wdewind
This attitude is not helpful and actively damaging. Small sample sizes in
science _do_ serve a purpose: to get larger studies funded.

It's as if the top comment to every ShowHN post was: "Not at $200mm in
funding. Nothing to see here."

~~~
HNJohnC
Actively damaging? A little dramatic perhaps? I didn't say it doesn't serve a
purpose, I said there is nothing to see here. Quite literally. Until they do a
larger study why is it news?

~~~
wdewind
It is actively damaging to the community for you to take snipes at studies
when the reason you are criticizing the study is not only unnecessary
criticism that any layman could provide, it is actually a misinterpretation of
the study. You didn't add anything to the discussion.

As for why it is news, a lot of hackers are interested in mental health and
mindfulness+meditation specifically and would be interested in more cutting
edge news about it, rather than what ends up in the NYTimes 8 months later.

------
kazinator
Ask HN: can anyone come up with some old English language adage (or in any
other language) which says the same thing as this paper?

For instance:

 _" Abstract: the timeliness of mindful preemptive action is positively
correlated with mitigated needs for subsequent compensating or reparative
measures."

\--> "A stitch in time saves nine."

\--> "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."_

Not being able to _" see the forest for the trees"_ is in the right ball park.
Cliche Zen ideas come into play here also: opening your mind to the broader
experience, rather than straining at focusing.

"Turn on, tune in, drop out, man! ... and, like, learn more!" :)

~~~
clairity
not an adage, but here's an analogy (correct me if i'm wrong):

if you worry too much about the mechanics of shooting free throws, you're not
likely to learn to shoot them as well/quickly as someone who just shoots over
and over (and thereby letting their subconscious make the adjustments for
them).

basketball analogies are my favorite =)

