Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training

Effect of mindfulness meditation on brain–computer interface performance

“…Furthermore, long-term meditators show higher performance in the domains of sustained attention (Valentine & Sweet, 1999), executive attention (D. Chan & Woollacott, 2007;van den Hurk, Giommi, Gielen, Speckens, & Barendregt, 2010), and attention switching (Hodgins & Adair, 2010) as compared to matched controls. Studies investigating the effect of a 10-day and a 4-day mindfulness retreats respectively (Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008;Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010) revealed improvement in working memory capacity in meditators following the retreats. The latter study also observed that the meditators increased mindfulness level over an active control group (Zeidan et al, 2010).…”

“…Studies investigating the effect of a 10-day and a 4-day mindfulness retreats respectively (Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008;Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010) revealed improvement in working memory capacity in meditators following the retreats. The latter study also observed that the meditators increased mindfulness level over an active control group (Zeidan et al, 2010). Moreover, Tang et al (2007) observed that the people who underwent a 5-day intensive mindfulness meditation retreat showed greater improvement in executive attention, better mood, and decreased stressrelated cortisol compared with a control group.…”

“…A recent paper (Zeidan et al, 2010) showed that mindfulness meditation increases performance on cognitive tasks. They used the "active control" of listening to the Hobbit being read to them.…”

A More Rigorous Examination of the Effects of Mindfulness Meditation on Working Memory Capacity

“…Improvements in working memory functioning (Zeidan et al 2010), working memory capacity (Mrazek et al 2013;Quach et al 2016), and complex cognition (Mrazek et al) have been observed following training in mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness meditation has also been shown to buffer and protect working memory capacity and working memory performance from decrements due to stress (Jha et al 2010(Jha et al , 2017 and negative affect (Banks et al 2015).…”

“…The previously mentioned mindfulness meditation studies that demonstrated working memory capacity improvement have included some or most of these criteria in their study design, but not all. That is, mindfulness meditation is a technique different from tested outcome measures (criteria 3) that has been shown to improve performance on valid (criteria 2), individual measures of working memory capacity and working memory functioning when compared to an active control group (part of criteria 4) (Banks et al 2015;Jha et al 2010;Mrazek et al 2013;Quach et al 2016;Zeidan et al 2010). The main goal of the current study was to more rigorously investigate the efficacy of mindfulness meditation by using, as part of the study design, all of the aforementioned criteria recommended by the reviews of the computerized working memory training literature.…”