Mindfulness is the dynamic process of building and maintaining awareness of one’s environment and paying attention to stimuli (Langer, 1989; Brown, Ryan, & Creswell, 2007). A cognitively effortful endeavor, mindfulness requires “the capacity to respond to unanticipated cues or signals from one’s context” (Levinthal & Rerup, 2006, p. 504). Mindful...
To navigate our environment we are often required to quickly and accurately derive simplified patterns from the complexity of life. This dissertation seeks to understand when the process of pattern perception occurs and when it goes awry and individuals falsely or inaccurately perceive patterns. I review the literature on various...