Mindfulness improves decision-making, attention in

June 3, 2020

Science Daily/Rutgers University

School-based mindfulness programs can improve decision-making skills and teach children with autism to focus attention and react less impulsively through breathing exercises that will allow them to reduce anxiety, according to Rutgers researchers.

The study, published in the journal Research in Developmental Disabilities, is the first to examine the effectiveness of a school-based mindfulness program that emphasizes self-awareness and controlled breathing in children on the autism spectrum.

Mindfulness practice trains people to focus their attention on awareness of the present moment. In neurotypical children, it has been shown to improve decision-making skills and to be effective in reducing anxiety, a common condition in the one in 68 children nationwide diagnosed with autism.

The researchers administered an eight-week mindfulness program to 27 high-functioning students with autism ages 10 to 17 at Newmark, a private school for children with special needs in New Jersey. Students were introduced to the basic tenets of mindfulness, then taught specific practices such as mindful breathing or focusing attention on the body, thoughts and emotions.

The students were tested on their impulse control, attention and decision-making before and after the program. "We found that the children improved their executive functions like controlling emotions, maintaining self-control, focusing attention and being flexible in changing their perspectives," said lead investigator Helen Genova, a research assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School and director of the Social Cognition and Neuroscience Laboratory at Kessler Foundation. "As in previous studies on school-based mindfulness programs and typically functioning children, we found that the practice taught the students to take a moment to stop and breathe. This reduced impulsiveness and allowed them to make better decisions."

Regina Peter, co-executive director of Newmark, said the school promotes mindfulness every morning and before tests and competitions. "Practicing mindfulness teaches our students the important skill of treating the moment as something that needs to be attended to and to let everything else go," she said. "The wonderful thing about mindfulness is that it is a tool they can take out when they need it. It is not a medication with side effects, and it's free."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200603100501.htm

Mindfulness for middle school students

Focusing awareness on the present moment can enhance academic performance and lower stress levels

August 26, 2019

Science Daily/Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Two new studies from MIT suggest that mindfulness -- the practice of focusing one's awareness on the present moment -- can enhance academic performance and mental health in middle schoolers. The researchers found that more mindfulness correlates with better academic performance, fewer suspensions from school, and less stress.

"By definition, mindfulness is the ability to focus attention on the present moment, as opposed to being distracted by external things or internal thoughts. If you're focused on the teacher in front of you, or the homework in front of you, that should be good for learning," says John Gabrieli, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research.

The researchers also showed, for the first time, that mindfulness training can alter brain activity in students. Sixth-graders who received mindfulness training not only reported feeling less stressed, but their brain scans revealed reduced activation of the amygdala, a brain region that processes fear and other emotions, when they viewed images of fearful faces.

Together, the findings suggest that offering mindfulness training in schools could benefit many students, says Gabrieli, who is the senior author of both studies.

"We think there is a reasonable possibility that mindfulness training would be beneficial for children as part of the daily curriculum in their classroom," he says. "What's also appealing about mindfulness is that there are pretty well-established ways of teaching it."

In the moment

Both studies were performed at charter schools in Boston. In one of the papers, which appears today in the journal Behavioral Neuroscience, the MIT team studied about 100 sixth-graders. Half of the students received mindfulness training every day for eight weeks, while the other half took a coding class. The mindfulness exercises were designed to encourage students to pay attention to their breath, and to focus on the present moment rather than thoughts of the past or the future.

Students who received the mindfulness training reported that their stress levels went down after the training, while the students in the control group did not. Students in the mindfulness training group also reported fewer negative feelings, such as sadness or anger, after the training.

About 40 of the students also participated in brain imaging studies before and after the training. The researchers measured activity in the amygdala as the students looked at pictures of faces expressing different emotions.

At the beginning of the study, before any training, students who reported higher stress levels showed more amygdala activity when they saw fearful faces. This is consistent with previous research showing that the amygdala can be overactive in people who experience more stress, leading them to have stronger negative reactions to adverse events.

"There's a lot of evidence that an overly strong amygdala response to negative things is associated with high stress in early childhood and risk for depression," Gabrieli says.

After the mindfulness training, students showed a smaller amygdala response when they saw the fearful faces, consistent with their reports that they felt less stressed. This suggests that mindfulness training could potentially help prevent or mitigate mood disorders linked with higher stress levels, the researchers say.

Evaluating mindfulness

In the other paper, which appeared in the journal Mind, Brain, and Education in June, the researchers did not perform any mindfulness training but used a questionnaire to evaluate mindfulness in more than 2,000 students in grades 5-8. The questionnaire was based on the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale, which is often used in mindfulness studies on adults. Participants are asked to rate how strongly they agree with statements such as "I rush through activities without being really attentive to them."

The researchers compared the questionnaire results with students' grades, their scores on statewide standardized tests, their attendance rates, and the number of times they had been suspended from school. Students who showed more mindfulness tended to have better grades and test scores, as well as fewer absences and suspensions.

"People had not asked that question in any quantitative sense at all, as to whether a more mindful child is more likely to fare better in school," Gabrieli says. "This is the first paper that says there is a relationship between the two."

The researchers now plan to do a full school-year study, with a larger group of students across many schools, to examine the longer-term effects of mindfulness training. Shorter programs like the two-month training used in the Behavioral Neuroscience study would most likely not have a lasting impact, Gabrieli says.

"Mindfulness is like going to the gym. If you go for a month, that's good, but if you stop going, the effects won't last," he says. "It's a form of mental exercise that needs to be sustained."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190826153630.htm