Effects of Praying and a Working Memory Task in Participants Trained in Meditation and Controls on the Occurrence of Spontaneous Thoughts

So-called “intrusive thoughts” appear independently from external stimuli and are the cause of severe disturbances in depressed patients. Following Bad-deley's 1986 discoveries regarding “articulatory suppression,” we investigated the influence of praying and of a working memory task on the number of spontaneous thoughts reported by 20 subjects compared to the control (quiet) state. Two groups of subjects were tested: those trained in meditation and controls. Significant reduction in simultaneous thought arousal was obtained during both the working memory task and the recitation of prayer. In all three experimental conditions, meditation practitioners reported significantly fewer spontaneous thoughts.