Mindfulness practice is the cultivation of awareness to the present moment and has been shown in recent years to have beneficial effects on cognition. However, to date, the data regarding the impact of mindfulness on memory--and specifically on memory distortions--is scarce and incomplete. The present study was aimed to examine whether mindfulness practice would have an effect on true and false memories. To this end, the effect of mindfulness meditation practice on memory performance was examined in two experiments in which false memories were provoked using the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (Roediger & McDermott, 1995). In Experiment 1, college students were randomly divided into either a 5-week mindfulness-practice group (n = 29) or a waitlist control group (n = 22). In Experiment 2, college students were randomly divided into either a brief mindfulness session (n = 21) or a mind-wandering control group (n = 19). The results indicated that mindfulness increased the recognition of true memories with no effect on spontaneous false-memories, yet increased the rate of provoked false-memories. These findings are discussed in terms of memory sensitivity and response bias, and it is argued that mindfulness may have a lesser effect on encoding processes than previously suggested.

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Abstract:The transition to college enhances feelings of loneliness, and lonely students typically underperform academically due to the depletion of cognitive resources. Mindfulness practice has been demonstrated to improve certain cognitive abilities. The current study examined whether mindfulness practice may moderate the relations between perceived loneliness and academic performance. In this study we combined data from two separate studies. In the first, loneliness, optimism, and academic self-efficacy were measured at the beginning of the academic year. In the second, mindfulness workshops were conducted in order to examine their impact on memory performance. In all, 73 college students in their first semester participated in the conjoint study (N = 50 mindfulness practice and N = 23 control). Their grades at the end of the semester and at the end of the year were also collected. Regression analyses were conducted in order to examine whether mindfulness moderated the effect of loneliness on academic achievements, and revealed that: a) loneliness was negatively correlated with recognition memory performance and with grades; b) grades were higher in the mindfulness group than in the control group; c) mindfulness and loneliness interacted, such that loneliness negatively predicted academic grades only for students who did not practice mindfulness. The results suggested that mindfulness practice may reduce the outcomes of loneliness on academic achievements in the first year of college.

The goals of the study were to examine personal resources and social distress during the first month in college among students with learning disabilities (LD) and to compare their experiences with non-LD peer. The sample consisted of 335 first-year undergraduate students falling into two groups: 85 students with LD and 250 non-LD students. Questionnaires assessed hope, dispositional optimism and loneliness. We hypothesised that, after participation in a single-session hope intervention workshop, the hope and optimism levels of both students with LD and without LD would increase, while their loneliness would decrease. However, after a month of facing the academic and social demands of their new college environment, we expected that the hope and optimism scores of students with LD would be lower than their peers without LD and that their loneliness scores would be higher. As hypothesised, both groups reported enhanced hope and optimism, as well as lower loneliness, immediately after the workshop. However, students with LD -but not their peers -returned to baseline levels of hope and loneliness after a month. Loneliness after a month predicted lower hope, after controlling predictors from the beginning of the year.