A cognitive framework for becoming deliberately conscious

Meditation training improves mental well-being by engaging a metacognitive process. During meditation, a person tries to maintain a target content in consciousness, requiring monitoring and regulation of conscious contents. This involves a metacognitive template of the target; comparing this template to actual conscious content generates a "metacognitive prediction error" (MPE). MPE helps fine-tune the frequency of monitoring, unconscious processing, and the template itself, enabling efficient regulation. The framework explains existing neuroscientific findings on meditation and generates testable hypotheses.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Meditation training is widely used to enhance mental well-being. However, a mechanistic cognitive science framework for understanding how it transforms mental processing is still needed. The act of practicing meditation involves trying to be deliberately conscious of a target content. This requires monitoring the contents of one’s consciousness and regulating them in favor of the target. I propose, this involves a metacognitive template of the target being present in consciousness, which when compared to the actual conscious content generates a “metacognitive prediction error” (MPE). MPE leads to efficient regulation of conscious content by helping fine-tune the frequency of monitoring, downstream unconscious processing, and the metacognitive template itself. The proposed framework parsimoniously explains existing neuroscientific findings on meditation and generates testable hypotheses.