The role of mindfulness in enhancing cognitive processing efficiency among university students
Fatima Nasser Aljarrah, Heyam Yousef Alfwaeer, Hala Yousef Abdelrahman Khasawneh
Humanities and Social Sciences Letters October 20, 2026 DOI: 10.18488/73.v14i4.5274 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control-group design Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 140 |
| Population | Female undergraduate students at Irbid University College, Al-Balqa Applied University, Jordan |
| Intervention | Mindfulness training |
| Duration | Eight sessions over four weeks |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key findings | After four weeks of mindfulness training, the experimental group completed a visual-discrimination and symbol-matching task faster than controls (posttest mean 44.10 vs 50.90 seconds), with an ANCOVA controlling for pretest scores significant at partial eta-squared 0.346. The experimental group improved from pretest to posttest while the control group did not. The authors suggest a potential effect of mindfulness training on information-processing speed. |
Abstract
This study investigated the effectiveness of a mindfulness training program for speeding up information processing among university students. A quasi–experimental pretest–posttest control-group design was used by 140 female undergraduate students from Irbid University College, Al-Balqa Applied University, Jordan. The participants were divided into an experimental group that underwent eight mindfulness sessions over the course of four weeks (n = 70) and a control group that underwent no intervention at all (n = 70). Information-processing speed was measured by a standardized visual-discrimination and symbol-matching task (with faster completion times suggesting faster information-processing speed). First, the pretest scores were compared using an independent-samples t-test, and the results did not reveal a significant difference between the groups, t (137.92) = 0.35, p = 0.728. At posttest, the experimental group completed the task faster (M = 44.10, SD = 7.50) than the control group (M = 50.90, SD = 8.10). Controlling for pretest scores in an ANCOVA revealed that the intervention was significant, F (1, 137) = 72.52, p < 0.001, partial η² = 0.346. The adjusted posttest mean was lower for the experimental group (M = 43.43, SE = 0.73) than for the control group (M = 52.20, SE = 0.73). It was also found that there is a pretest-to-posttest significant difference for the experimental group, while the control group did not exhibit this. These data, taken together, suggest a potential effect of mindfulness training on information-processing speed in children.
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 |