Photo by Dawit on Unsplash
Photo by Dawit on Unsplash

Mindfulness meditation apps could help you pay attention

Embargoed until: Publicly released:
Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

Experimental study: At least one thing in the experiment was changed to see if it had an impact on the subjects (often people or animals) – eg: changing the amount of time mice spend on an exercise wheel to find out what impact it has on weight loss.

People: This is a study based on research using people.

Mindfulness could help improve your attention, according to international researchers who add you might not actually notice the change yourself. The team had participants use a mindfulness app called Headspace, with guided meditation for 30 days, and measured their ability to control their attention by tracking eye movement tasks. Compared to control groups who listened to an audiobook instead and saw no improvement, those who used the mindfulness meditation app saw improved attention control.  Interestingly, an accompanying survey found the participants were not aware of these improvements when they self-reported cognitive ability, attention and distractibility.

Journal/conference: eNeuro

Research: Paper

Organisation/s: University of Southern California, USA

Funder: This work is supported by the National Institute on Aging grant number F32-AG076288 in addition to an internal grant from the University of Southern California Center for 22 Mindfulness Science to AJK.

Media release

From: Society for Neuroscience

Mobile mindfulness meditation apps may improve attention

People used mindfulness meditation apps for a month and it improved how quickly they oriented their attention.

Studies suggest mindfulness meditation can improve cognition, but few researchers have examined whether virtual mindfulness meditation apps are effective. In a new study, Andy Kim et al., from the University of Southern California, assessed attention control in adults following about a month of mindfulness meditation guided by a mobile app.

In participants of all ages, mindfulness improved attention control as measured by reliable eye movement tasks established to assess how quickly people orient their attention. A control group that listened to an audio book did not have this cognitive improvement. Notably, self-reported measures of cognitive ability, including attention and distractibility, suggest that participants were not aware of the cognitive improvement from meditation.

According to the authors, they are among the first to measure cognitive improvements from mindfulness using a reliable eye task in addition to self-reporting surveys. Future work may probe whether longer-term mindfulness interventions strengthen the effects observed in this study.

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