Does meditation training improve young children's attention?
Young schoolchildren who did an 8-week meditation programme were rated by their teacher as less inattentive afterwards, an improvement not seen in a class that spent the same time reading and discussing a book about emotions.
Source
Mindfulness-Oriented Meditation for Primary School Children: Effects on Attention and Psychological Well-Being
Study at a glance
- Design
- RCT — Two second-grade classes randomly assigned as whole classes to mindfulness-oriented meditation (MOM) or an active emotion-awareness reading control, same instructors, three sessions a week for 8 weeks; teacher ratings and child self-report before and after
- N
- N=31 · 31 children (16 MOM, 15 control); the child self-report analysis had 15 per group because one MOM child missed the post-test
- Population
- Healthy Italian primary school children aged 7-8 from two classes of one school
- Outcome
- Teacher-rated behaviour problems (CBCL-TRF), teacher-rated attention/ADHD symptoms (Conners CTRS-R) and child self-reported depressive mood (SMFQ)
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
Two second-year classes at one Italian primary school were randomly assigned, as whole classes, either to mindfulness-oriented meditation or to an active control activity. The meditation class did short breathing, body and thought-watching exercises three times a week for 8 weeks, with sessions getting longer over time; the control class spent the same time with the same instructors reading and discussing a children's book about emotions. The children's main teacher, who did not know the study's aims, rated each child's behaviour problems and attention/ADHD symptoms before and after, and the children rated their own mood.
What they found
On the attention-focused teacher scale there was a significant group-by-time interaction: only the meditation group improved, with lower scores on inattention, the ADHD index and restless/impulsive behaviour, and no change in hyperactivity or oppositional behaviour. On the broader behaviour checklist, both groups showed fewer total and internalising problems after training, with no difference between them. Children's self-reported depressive mood did not change in either group.
The limits
What it doesn't show
With 31 children in only two classes, randomisation was at class level, so any difference between the two classrooms is confounded with the treatment. All the positive outcomes come from a single teacher's ratings rather than objective attention tests, and the children's own reports showed no benefit, possibly because baseline mood scores were already near the floor. There was no follow-up, so it is unknown whether the attention gains lasted, and the children were healthy, so the results do not show the programme treats ADHD.
Key terms
- Active control group
- A comparison group that receives a different activity matched on time, instructors and format, so that effects specific to the treatment can be separated from general effects of attention and group activity.
- Cluster (class-level) randomisation
- Randomly assigning whole groups, such as classrooms, rather than individual people to conditions; with few clusters, group differences can be confounded with treatment.
- Mindfulness-oriented meditation
- Meditation practice that trains attention on breathing, body sensations and passing thoughts while noticing and gently returning from distraction without judgement.
- Internalising vs externalising problems
- Internalising problems are inward-directed difficulties such as anxiety, withdrawal and sadness; externalising problems are outward behaviours such as aggression and rule-breaking.
- Floor effect
- When scores are already so low at baseline that there is little room for them to go down further, making improvement hard to detect.
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Quiz yourself
What did the control group do during the 8 weeks?
Common questions
Why did the researchers use a book-reading group instead of a no-treatment control?
Earlier child mindfulness studies often used waitlists or no control, so any gain could reflect extra adult attention or a novel group activity. Matching time, instructors and format lets the authors attribute differences to meditation itself.
Why might the teacher see improvements that the children did not report?
Young children may not yet be good at reflecting on their own feelings, teachers judge behaviour rather than inner mood, and the children's mood scores were already low, leaving little room to improve.
Does this show meditation treats ADHD?
No. The children were healthy and their scores were in the normal range; the study shows reduced teacher-rated inattention in a typical class, which only suggests ADHD applications worth testing.
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