Mindfulness inhibits implicit learning—the wellspring of bad habits

"Being mindful appears to help prevent the formation of bad habits, but perhaps good ones too. Georgetown University researchers are trying to unravel the impact of implicit learning, and their findings might appear counterintuitive—at first.

"Consider this: when testing who would do best on a task to find patterns among a bunch of dots many might think mindful people would score higher than those who are distracted, but researchers found the opposite—participants low on the mindfulness scale did much better on this test of implicit learning, the kind of learning that occurs without awareness.

"This outcome might be surprising until one considers that behavioral and neuroimaging studies suggest that mindfulness can undercut the automatic learning processes—the kind that lead to development of good and bad habits, says the study's lead author...."

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-11-mindfulness-inhibits-implicit-learningthe-wellspring.html

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