Meditation as a Cultural Practice: A Cultural-Historical Activity Perspective
The paper discusses some challenges from meditation studies which might be analyzed within the framework of cultural-historical activity approach in psychology. The special focus of the paper is attention and its status as an independent mental process. This problem produced two classes of attentional theories in the history of psychology: «cause theories» and «effect theories». The two classes of theories are confronted as related to human perceptual activity within the framework of the activity theory proposed by Alexey Leontiev and the physiology of activity developed by Nikolai Bernstein. «Cause theories» and «effect theories» are analyzed both theoretically and in the light of experimental studies of the so-called «attentional blink» phenomenon. This transient attentional error under rapid serial visual presentation conditions, first described 25 years ago, has become a ground for the confrontation of various models and theories of attention. At the same time, it has become an object of the keen interest of meditation and mindfulness researchers. The facts of the attentional blink decrease due to the change of the structure of perceptual activity are compared to the facts of the similar attentional blink decrease after the meditation retreat. The problem of the nature of internal cultural means mediating meditation and mindfulness practices is raised as a result of the whole discussion.