6 ms·

Dispositional mindfulness is associated with reduced implicit learning

57 points by unicornporn 12y ago

unicornporn 12y ago
Original paper: http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:1749328:5/component/escidoc:1760288/1-s2.0-S1053810013000780-main.pdf http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:1749328:5/comp...
- elpres 12y ago
  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.
MarkPNeyer 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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/1439189749/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407884946&sr=8-1&keywords=autistic+husband+handbook http://www.amazon.com/The-Journal-Best-Practices-Marriage/dp...
- orasis 12y ago
  Almost everyone spends most of their time in thought. This mode of the brain is called the "default mode network". Mindfulness disengages the "default mode network" and instead engages the "experiential focus network" which is more attuned to the 5 senses, and less absorbed in thought.
  - MarkPNeyer 12y ago
    my 'default mode' is the task positive network. the task positive network and default mode network are counter-driven - so having a task positive network active means the default mode network is off. evaluating other people's emotional states and daydreaming are the primary functioning of the default mode network - things which it takes me a lot of effort to do. drifting off to thought about 'the nature of consciousness' comes naturally; it takes effort to look at the people around me and evaluate their emotional content. this is the point i was trying to make above, but failed to understand the article.
- bayesianhorse 12y ago
  This sounds vaguely like attention deficit disorder.
  - TheSisb2 12y ago
    I think that statement is most accurate with the word "vaguely". This sort of mental state/behavioral disposition and A.D.D. are mutually exclusive. In fact, usually people who are this way are introverted and rather calm natured.
    - bayesianhorse 12y ago
      Nope. Hyperactivity is not a necessary symptom for A.D.D. But this is a very common misconception. Without hyperactivity, patients have a tendency to never get a diagnosis until sometimes even in their fifties, they start wondering why they are still chaotic, unorganized, can't seem to get their social skills in order or other seemingly unrelated stuff. Turns out, when somebody has diagnoseable ADHD, then the corresponding treatment options apply. And there's not a thing they can do to solve their problems which is more effective than treating ADHD according to well-proven guidelines. I can recommend "Pay Attention! ADHD through the lifetime" from Coursera. That MOOC goes into quite some detail about how ADHD affects people.
      - TheSisb2 12y ago
        Thanks I will look it up
mrcactu5 12y ago
so the harder you think about it, the less you are able to learn?
- MarkPNeyer 12y ago
  there is a difference between implicit and explicit learning. implicit learning is knowing how to react to a given situation. explicit learning is knowing why that is. implict learning is what google translate does. 'this goes with this, that goes with that.' why? 'because, this goes with this, that goes with that.'
- trentonstrong 12y ago
  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.
- cratermoon 12y ago
  No, it means that you learn more explicitly, with more awareness of what you are learning.
- PeterWhittaker 12y ago
  (See my other comments) Basically, no: implicit learning requires you to think as hard as possible about nothing else, at least at first. Mindfulness takes some of your thinking away from the task you are learning and directs it at meta-thinking, if you will, observing what you are thinking about. This reduced attention to the task at hand appears to cause you to take longer to learn that task. EDIT: Fixed prepositions, missing word.
adamzerner 12y ago
Yes! I've always suspected that this is true.
- droopyEyelids 12y ago
  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 12y ago
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?
TheSisb2 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
alexc05 12y ago
So they're saying that if you don't pay attention you don't learn?
- PeterWhittaker 12y ago
  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.
incision 12y ago
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-cognitive-aging-study.html http://www.georgetown.edu/research/news/mindfulness-cognitiv...
- JohnnyBrown 12y ago
  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.
kazinator 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 =)
- Jupe 12y ago
  "Sh*t, or get off the pot"
HNJohnC 12y ago
"We tested two adult samples using two different sequence learning tasks." Two? Nothing to see here.
- briandh 12y ago
  Two samples, not two subjects. Still not definitive, but definitely "something to see" if their methodology holds up (I don't have access).
- wdewind 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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 12y ago
      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.
- bayesianhorse 12y ago
  I think they mean two different studies, not two subjects.
- sangfroid 12y ago
cJ0th 12y ago
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".

57 points by unicornporn 12y ago

Original paper: http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:1749328:5/component/escidoc:1760288/1-s2.0-S1053810013000780-main.pdf http://pubman.mpdl.mpg.de/pubman/item/escidoc:1749328:5/comp...

elpres 12y ago
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.

MarkPNeyer 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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/1439189749/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407884946&sr=8-1&keywords=autistic+husband+handbook http://www.amazon.com/The-Journal-Best-Practices-Marriage/dp...
orasis 12y ago
Almost everyone spends most of their time in thought. This mode of the brain is called the "default mode network". Mindfulness disengages the "default mode network" and instead engages the "experiential focus network" which is more attuned to the 5 senses, and less absorbed in thought.
- MarkPNeyer 12y ago
  my 'default mode' is the task positive network. the task positive network and default mode network are counter-driven - so having a task positive network active means the default mode network is off. evaluating other people's emotional states and daydreaming are the primary functioning of the default mode network - things which it takes me a lot of effort to do. drifting off to thought about 'the nature of consciousness' comes naturally; it takes effort to look at the people around me and evaluate their emotional content. this is the point i was trying to make above, but failed to understand the article.
bayesianhorse 12y ago
This sounds vaguely like attention deficit disorder.
- TheSisb2 12y ago
  I think that statement is most accurate with the word "vaguely". This sort of mental state/behavioral disposition and A.D.D. are mutually exclusive. In fact, usually people who are this way are introverted and rather calm natured.
  - bayesianhorse 12y ago
    Nope. Hyperactivity is not a necessary symptom for A.D.D. But this is a very common misconception. Without hyperactivity, patients have a tendency to never get a diagnosis until sometimes even in their fifties, they start wondering why they are still chaotic, unorganized, can't seem to get their social skills in order or other seemingly unrelated stuff. Turns out, when somebody has diagnoseable ADHD, then the corresponding treatment options apply. And there's not a thing they can do to solve their problems which is more effective than treating ADHD according to well-proven guidelines. I can recommend "Pay Attention! ADHD through the lifetime" from Coursera. That MOOC goes into quite some detail about how ADHD affects people.
    - TheSisb2 12y ago
      Thanks I will look it up

mrcactu5 12y ago

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

MarkPNeyer 12y ago
there is a difference between implicit and explicit learning. implicit learning is knowing how to react to a given situation. explicit learning is knowing why that is. implict learning is what google translate does. 'this goes with this, that goes with that.' why? 'because, this goes with this, that goes with that.'
trentonstrong 12y ago
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.
cratermoon 12y ago
No, it means that you learn more explicitly, with more awareness of what you are learning.
PeterWhittaker 12y ago
(See my other comments) Basically, no: implicit learning requires you to think as hard as possible about nothing else, at least at first. Mindfulness takes some of your thinking away from the task you are learning and directs it at meta-thinking, if you will, observing what you are thinking about. This reduced attention to the task at hand appears to cause you to take longer to learn that task. EDIT: Fixed prepositions, missing word.

adamzerner 12y ago

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

droopyEyelids 12y ago
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 12y ago

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?

TheSisb2 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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.

alexc05 12y ago

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

PeterWhittaker 12y ago
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.

incision 12y ago

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-cognitive-aging-study.html http://www.georgetown.edu/research/news/mindfulness-cognitiv...

JohnnyBrown 12y ago
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.

kazinator 12y ago

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 12y ago
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 =)
Jupe 12y ago
"Sh*t, or get off the pot"

HNJohnC 12y ago

"We tested two adult samples using two different sequence learning tasks." Two? Nothing to see here.

briandh 12y ago
Two samples, not two subjects. Still not definitive, but definitely "something to see" if their methodology holds up (I don't have access).
wdewind 12y ago
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 12y ago
  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 12y ago
    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.
bayesianhorse 12y ago
I think they mean two different studies, not two subjects.
sangfroid 12y ago

cJ0th 12y ago

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".