The effectiveness of mindfulness in executive functions andcognitive regulation of emotion in students with AttentionDeficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) is a chronic neurodevelopmental disorder. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of mindfulness therapy in improving executive functions and cognitive regulation of emotion in AD/HD students.

the research was a semi-experimental pre-test-post-test type with a control group, and the selection of subjects and assignment of subjects to two groups was done randomly. The statistical population included elementary school boys (10 to 12 years old) of Bandar Anzali city with AD/HD disorder; 32 students were selected through available sampling and through the SNAP-IV rating scale, 16 of whom were randomly assigned to the experimental group and 16 to the control group. The research tool for measuring executive functions was the Brief Executive Functions Questionnaire (BRIEF); and to measure the cognitive regulation of emotion, the cognitive regulation of emotion questionnaire CERQ-P by Garnevsky and Kridge was used. To analyze the data, multivariate analysis of covariance (Mancova) test and spss27 software were used.

The results indicated the confirmation of the effectiveness of mindfulness intervention on behavior regulation skills and metacognitive skills of executive functions (p<0.05). Also, the effectiveness of the intervention on four components of the cognitive regulation of emotion was confirmed (p<0.05); It Included a significant increase in the amount of positive focus, positive evaluation and perspective-taking, and also caused a significant decrease in the amount of catastrophizing.

The findings of the present study showed that mindfulness interventions have an effect on the components of executive functions and cognitive regulation of emotion in AD/HD students.