A Randomized Controlled Trial Examining the Effect of
Mindfulness Meditation on
Working Memory Capacity
in Adolescents
By Brandt Kam
The amount of research involving mindfulness interventions has grown exponentially, however only in the last decade has mindfulness research involving adolescents increased rapidly. Mindfulness interventions have been known to exhibit positive health results among adolescents and adults. As these positive health results have become more common, researchers have started to focus on more specific benefits of mindfulness training, namely on working memory.
There has been an increase in the study of the impacts that mindfulness may have on working memory because both involve moment to moment awareness. Existing literature with adult samples suggest that mindfulness meditation may be used to increase working memory capacity (WMC), however, the effectiveness of mindfulness training on improving (WMC) in adolescents has not been investigated. It could be inferred that strengthening WMC among adolescents would be valuable during the developmental stages, where the majority of their day is spent in an educational setting.
A study led by Dianna Quach investigated the relationship between mindfulness mediation and working memory capacity among adolescents. This study was conducted on students from Southern California between the ages of 12 and 17 years old and designed to investigate whether different interventions impacted working memory better than others. Students were randomly assigned to three different groups, a mindfulness meditation group, a hatha yoga group, and a waitlist control group.
Study results show that the mindfulness meditation group reported significant improvements pre and post intervention in working memory capacity (WMC), while those participants in the hatha yoga and waitlist control group didn’t report any significant improvement in WMC.
The study’s hypothesis that mindfulness meditation was more effective at improving WMC than hatha yoga was supported. The results of this study are provide more evidence that the practice of mindfulness meditation can actively enhance working memory.
“The results of this study are provide more evidence that the practice of mindfulness meditation can actively enhance working memory.”
Potential mechanisms may explain the study’s results. First, meditation requires similar functions to that of (WMC), namely implementing a sustained attention while simultaneously redirecting attention back to the current experience. Second, it is conceivable that learning to practice hatha yoga mindfully may have proven difficult for adolescents, which could have influenced the results. If done so mindfully, hatha yoga may in fact provide similar benefits to WMC.
The results of this study are consistent with the notion that the practice of mindfulness meditation is closely related to the function of working memory and promotes it. Although this study is promising in establishing a positive link between the practice of mindfulness meditation and WMC, further studies need to be conducted in order increase factor generalization. Also alternative intervention timing may need to be incorporated.