The Effectiveness of Short Meditation on Attentional Performance: A Quick Classroom Activity
Ren Guerriero, Shreyas Joshi, Bruce F. O’Hara
Current Research in Complementary & Alternative Medicine September 22, 2023 DOI: 10.29011/2577-2201.100203 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Within-subjects design Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Population | Undergraduate students in an introductory biology course and a 300-level neuroscience techniques course |
| Intervention | Focused-breathing meditation |
| Duration | 5-minute activity |
| Measures | Psychomotor vigilance test (PVT) |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Keywords | Cognitive psychology Psychotherapist |
| Key points | A majority of students showed reaction time improvements after five minutes of focused-breathing meditation or five minutes of being sedentary, and prior night's sleep had no effect on performance changes. |
Abstract
Undergraduate students suffer from stress and attention problems throughout their academic career.This is a great time for students to learn a new skill; meditation practices have been shown to improve mental and physical health and our activity can introduce them to this beneficial practice.Utilizing the learning-cycle approach, we had students first engage with a problem, explore interpretations, conduct a meditation experiment, and then interpret and explain results.This short activity investigates the impact of focused-breathing meditation on the attention of students using the psychomotor vigilance test (PVT).The within subjects' design showed that a majority of students see reaction time improvements with just 5-minutes of meditation or 5-minutes of being sedentary.This has been repeated over many years and in both an introductory biology course and as well in a 300-level neuroscience techniques course.We also investigated if the amount of sleep the previous night would impact performance changes, but this was found to have no effect.Our 5-minute meditation activity taught with the learning-cycle approach can be quickly added to any neuroscience, biology, behavior, or psychology course.Further discussion focuses on the stress response, the neurophysiology of meditation, brain electrical activity, brain regions, and impact of behaviors on physiology.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |
Citations in the library
Cites 7
- Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences October 11, 2007
- Toward the Integration of Meditation into Higher Education: A Review of Research Evidence Teachers College Record: The Voice of Scholarship in Education March 1, 2011
- Theta Phase Synchrony and Conscious Target Perception: Impact of Intensive Mental Training Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience September 29, 2008
- EEG Derived Neuronal Dynamics during Meditation: Progress and Challenges Advances in Preventive Medicine 2015
- Promoting a Healthy Lifestyle through Mindfulness in University Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Nutrients August 14, 2020
and 2 more in the library