The effect of a course mindfulness exercises on working memory indexes in adolescents

Research has shown that neglecting psychological skills such as mindfulness leads to a decline in physical and psychological performance in people.

The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a course of mindfulness exercises on working memory indexes in adolescents.

The present study was a semi-experimental study with two experimental and control groups. The statistical population consisted of teenagers aged 14 to 18 years in the first district of Tehran city in 2022. The participants included 20 adolescents (10 girls and 10 boys) who were available, selected, and randomly divided into two 10-member mindfulness and control groups. The mindfulness group exercises lasted 20-45 minutes per session for 6 weeks. Corsi Block software was used to measure working memory indexes. Mixed analysis of variance and independent and paired t-tests were used to analyze the data. All statistical analyzes were performed with SPSS software version 21 at the P<0.05 level.

The results for the number of correct responses showed that the main effect of stage (F=26.85, P=0.0001, η2=0.59) and the interactive effect of stage-group (F=10.87, P=0.004, η2=0.37) were significant, but the main effect of group (F=0.23, P=0.59, η2=0.01) was not significant. The results of the paired-samples t test showed that the mindfulness group showed significant progress from the pretest to the posttest (P=0.0001).

The results of this study show the effect of mindfulness exercises on working memory indicators in adolescents. This type of intervention can be of great help to professionals in this field to improve people's cognitive and motor performance. Therefore, it is suggested to use mindfulness exercises to improve working memory and its effect on the process of cognitive decisions.