Source Memory and Cognitive Control in Gurdjieff Meditators

Several studies have been conducted to investigate the influence of meditation on cognition. Little is known, however, about the potential effects of meditation on episodic memory performance. In order to address this issue, we recruited 38 participants with a minimum of 5 years of daily practice of Gurdjieff meditation, and 38 participants matched for age and education, who had never practiced meditation. All participants performed two memory tasks, namely, the Rey complex figure test, and a source memory task in which they saw figures of objects on the left or right side of a computer screen, and had later to indicate the side wherein each object was previously seen. Attention and working memory capacities were also examined. The current data shows that Gurdjieff meditators present greater working memory performance than non-meditators. The two groups, however, show identical performance in both memory tasks. Thus, although the current results give further support for the notion that meditation is beneficial to working memory performance, no evidence was found suggesting that such benefits are extended to episodic memory performance.