Date of Award

Winter 2-2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Kinesiology

First Advisor

Dr. Andrew C. Parks

Abstract

Today’s young adult experience a world designed to constantly demand the individual’s attention through a barage of stimuli, making the ability to adequately inhibit irrelevant stimuli a necessary skillset for this population. While health behaviors such as exercise have shown positive effects on this ability, other behaviors such as mindfulness meditation have been less explored. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to examine the influence of an acute bout of guided mindfulness meditation on inhibition aspects of attention in college-age adults. Using a within-subjects repeated measures design, twenty-four participants (age = 21.35 ± 0.92 years) engaged in both a 15-minute guided mindfulness meditation intervention and a control condition across two separate days. Prior to and following the experimental conditions, participants completed a cognitive assessment battery including a modified Eriksen flanker task and a three-stimulus oddball task. In addition, participants completed the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale and Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire during each session. Results from this study indicated no effect of either condition on any of the measures of cognitive performance (mean reaction time and response accuracy) or on either of the questionnaires. These findings suggest that an acute bout of mindfulness mediation may not be sufficient to elicit detectable changes in cognitive performance, indicating either a need for more sensitive measurement tools for future studies or a greater duration/frequency for the intervention protocol.

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