خلاصة:
Objective: The present study aimed to investigate effectiveness of mindfulness exercises on
the executive functions of elementary school students.
Methods: To this end, 32 female students of second and third grade were selected by cluster
sampling method with regard to inclusion criteria (having average IQ, being right-handed)
and exclusion criteria (having physical and mental illness, or psychological and psychiatric
interventions) and randomly assigned in experimental (mean±SD age; 97.12±3.48 mo) and
control groups (mean±SD age; 96.18±3.33 mo). Then, the experimental group participated
in 8 sessions of mindfulness exercise (each session, 1 h), but control group received no
intervention. Before and after intervention, all participants took working memory test,
continuous performance test, and Wisconsin card sorting test. Finally, the obtained data were
analyzed by ANCOVA with SPSS 21 software.
Results: Our findings showed that mindfulness had significant effect on forward and backward
memory as well as total score of memory (P<0.01). Also, findings showed that mindfulness
improved perseveration dimension of cognitive flexibility (P<0.05). Finally, mindfulness
could somewhat improve response time of attention (P<0.01).
Conclusion: These findings are consistent with previous research in which the effectiveness
of mindfulness on executive functions was approved, though in some dimensions of our
variables, the effects were not significant which might be due to the limited sessions of training.
ملخص الجهاز:
"In addition, development and academic success of children necessarily depend on their working memory, attention, and cognitive flexibility (Baldo, Shimamura, Delis, Kramer, & Kaplan, 2001; Baldo & Shimamura, 1997; Chi, Kim, Han, Lee, Park, & Lee, 2012; Van Der Elst, Hurks, Wassenberg, Mejis, & Jolles, 2011) which are known as executive func- tions.
, 2010; Diamond & Lee, 2011; Teper & Inzlicht, 2013), the attention in particular (Napoli, Krech, & Holley, 2005; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007; Tamm, Epstein, Peugh, Nakonezny, & Hughes, 2013), memory (Jha, Stanely, Ki- yonaga, Wong, & Gelfand, 2010), and psychological flex- ibility (Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010), but no research has been done so far on the effec- tiveness of mindfulness on different dimensions of execu- tive functions, particularly among elementary students in Iran.
For example, some studies examined the effects of mindfulness practices on improving executive functions and behavioral inhibition (Raes, Bruyneel, Lo- eys, Moerkerke, & De Raedt, 2015; Flook et al.
Regarding the effectiveness of mindful- ness practices on cognitive flexibility, our findings are somewhat consistent with previous studies (Parker, Ku- persmidt, Mathis, Scull, & Sims, 2014; Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010).
Based on this study, we suggest that the effectiveness of this intervention be evaluated with respect to age and grade of the students and using new versions of MAPs. Also, we suggest that working memory and cognitive flexibility (creative) be improved both in clinical and nonclinical populations to treat former group and in- crease skills of executive functions in the latter one."