Cultivating multiple aspects of attention through mindfulness meditation accounts for psychological well-being through decreased rumination

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Table 1 Proposed components of mindfulness meditation

Author(s)	Proposed components of mindfulness meditation	Direct attentional component?
Kabat-Zinn^Citation35	1. Attentional skills and 2. Development of a nonjudgmental attitude toward one’s experiences	☑
Brown and Ryan^Citation17	1. Attention to and awareness of moment-to-moment experience	☑
Bishop et al^Citation5	1. Paying attention to the here and now 2. An orientation of curiosity, openness, and acceptance	☑
Shapiro et al^Citation18	1. Intention 2. Attention 3. Attitude	☑
Baer et al^Citation54	1. Observing (attending to internal and external stimuli) 2. Describing 3. Acting with awareness 4. Nonjudgment of inner experience 5. Nonreactivity to inner experiences	☑
Hölzel et al^Citation21	1. Attention regulation 2. Body awareness 3. Emotion regulation 4. Change in perspective on the self	☑
Farb et al^Citation55	1. Attention to present-moment sensation 2. A sense of equanimity	☑
Vago and Silbersweig^Citation56	1. Intention and motivation 2. Attention and emotion regulation 3. Extinction and reconsolidation 4. Prosociality 5. Nonattachment and 6. Decentering	☑

Table 2 Attention networks

Attention networks	Also known as	Definition
Alerting	Vigilance, sustained attention	The ability to maintain attention over long periods of time
Orienting	Selective attention, divided attention	The ability to limit attention to a subset of possible sensory inputs
Executive attention	Conflict monitoring, attention switching	The ability to prioritize attention in the context of competing cognitive demands

Table 3 Executive attention components

Executive attention	Also known as	Definition
Cognitive flexibility	Set-shifting	The ability to shift from one thought to another and/or to have multiple thoughts in mind at one time
Self-regulation	Self-control, willpower	The ability to monitor and modulate cognition, emotion, and behavior
Metacognitive awareness	Decentering, reperceiving	The ability to shift perspective from the subjective to the objective nature of a thought

Table 4 Attention regulation styles in mindfulness meditation

Types of attention in meditation	Also known as	Definition
Focused attention	Concentrative meditation	Attention is restricted to a specific chosen sensory input. Attention is ideally sustained, but focused attention also enables redirecting attention back to the original focus
Receptive attention	Open monitoring (OM)	Attention is receptive to the entire field of awareness. OM practices are characterized by distributed attention and nonjudgmental awareness

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