Mindfulness training with adolescents enhances metacognition and the inhibition of irrelevant stimuli: Evidence from event-related brain potentials
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With the increased interest in school-based mindfulness interventions, there have been repeated calls to investigate neurodevelopmental markers of change. This non-randomised study of 16–18 year olds with wait-list control group examined possible enhancements to brain indexes of attention processing after school-based mindfulness training using event-related potentials (ERPs) (N=47 for self-report; N=40 for ERPs). Results showed significantly more negative N2 amplitudes after training, in response to irrelevant frequent stimuli and colour-deviant non-target oddball stimuli in a visual oddball paradigm. Improvements in negative thought controllability were associated with more negative N2 amplitudes post-training across groups, and mindfulness training was associated with reductions in students' hypercritical self-beliefs. There were no group differences on task performance, but regression analysis indicated that programme satisfaction explained 16% of the variance in improved target accuracy. Together these results suggest that a school-based mindfulness curriculum can enhance older adolescents' task-relevant inhibitory control of attention and perceived mental competency.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 1-11 |
Number of pages | 12 |
Journal | Trends in Neuroscience and Education |
Volume | 5 |
Issue number | 1 |
Early online date | 29 Jan 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2016 |
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