Effectiveness of child-oriented mindfulness training on alexithymia and emotion regulation of children with Specific Learning Disorder

The purpose of the present study was to investigate the effectiveness of child-oriented mindfulness trainingon alexithymia and emotional regulation of the children with Specific Learning Disorder (SLD). The research design was experimental of pretest, posttest type with control group. The statistical population of the present study included children with SLD in the elementary school of Tehran in the academic year 2018-19. 30 individuals (17 boys and 13 girls) were selected through multi-stage clustered sampling and they were randomly accommodated into experimental and control groups. The instruments applied included fourth edition of Wechsler Intelligence Test (Wechsler, 2003), Questionnaire of Alexithymia (Ryff et.al, 2006), Questionnaire of Learning Problems (Wilcot et.al, 2011) and the Questionnaire of Emotional Regulation (Gross and John, 2003). The experiment group received 10 sessions of child-oriented mindfulness trainingintervention during two-and-a-half months. The data taken from the study were analyzed through MANCOVA method via SPSS23 statistical software. The results showed child-oriented mindfulness traininghas had significant effect on alexithymia and emotional regulations of the children with learning disability (p<0.001). The degrees of the effect of child-oriented mindfulness trainingon alexithymia and emotional regulation of the children with SLD were 50% and 67% respectively. According to the findings of the present study, it can be concluded that mindfulness trainingcan be used as an efficient therapy to decrease alexithymia and improve emotional regulation of the children with learning disability through employing techniques such as thoughts, emotions and mindful behavior.