Can mindfulness protect jailed teens' attention under stress?
Attention got worse over months in jail for all detained teenagers, but those given mindfulness-based training declined less, especially if they also practised on their own.
Source
Mindfulness training improves attentional task performance in incarcerated youth: a group randomized controlled intervention trial
Study at a glance
- Design
- RCT — Group-randomised trial: jail dormitories (4 intervention, 3 control) randomly assigned to a CBT/mindfulness programme (Power Source) or an active cognitive-perception control of equal contact time; Attention Network Test at baseline and about 4 months later
- N
- N=201 · 267 youth recruited; 201 completed both assessments and were analysed (subset of 191 with release data for release analyses; practice analysis compared 87 controls, 89 practisers and 25 non-practisers)
- Population
- Incarcerated male adolescents aged 16-18 in a large urban US jail complex, 98% Black or Latino
- Outcome
- Attention Network Test: overall accuracy, response time, response-time variability, and alerting, orienting and conflict-monitoring network scores
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
Male teenagers held in a New York jail complex were recruited, and their dormitories were randomly assigned either to a group programme combining cognitive behavioural therapy with mindfulness meditation or to an equally long control programme about attitudes to drugs and violence. Groups met for about 750 minutes over 3-5 weeks with trained clinicians. Before the programme and about four months later, the youths did the Attention Network Test, a computer task in which they indicate the direction of a central arrow surrounded by cues and distracting arrows.
What they found
Accuracy fell and responses became more variable over time in both groups, consistent with the stress of detention degrading attention. The decline was smaller in the mindfulness group: at follow-up it had higher overall accuracy (Cohen's d = 0.30) and more stable response times (d = 0.34) than controls. Youths who reported practising mindfulness outside sessions kept their accuracy (about 92%) better than non-practisers (83%) and controls (85%). The specific alerting, orienting and conflict-monitoring scores did not differ between groups, and being released during the study did not change the pattern.
The limits
What it doesn't show
Randomisation was by dormitory, with only seven dormitories of very unequal size, so the design is closer to quasi-experimental, as the authors admit. The practice comparison is not randomised: youths chose whether to practise, and non-practisers already had lower accuracy at baseline. The mindfulness programme also involved emotionally engaging CBT content, so higher motivation rather than better attention could explain the results, and CBT and mindfulness cannot be separated. Benefits appeared only in overall accuracy and variability, not in the specific attention networks mindfulness is thought to train, and no real-world outcomes such as reoffending were measured.
Key terms
- Attention Network Test (ANT)
- A computer task combining warning cues with congruent or incongruent flanking arrows to estimate three attention networks: alerting, orienting and conflict monitoring.
- Conflict monitoring
- The executive attention network that resolves competition between responses, measured as the slowing on incongruent compared with congruent flanker trials.
- Intra-individual coefficient of variation (ICV)
- A person's response-time standard deviation divided by their mean response time; lower values mean steadier, more consistent attention.
- Group (cluster) randomisation
- Assigning intact groups, here dormitories, to conditions; people within a group may be similar, which reduces the effective sample size.
- Dose-response relationship
- A pattern in which more exposure to a treatment, here more home practice, goes with larger benefits.
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Quiz yourself
What happened to attention task accuracy over the months of detention?
Common questions
Why would attention get worse in jail?
The authors argue that prolonged stress in a threatening, restrictive environment taxes cognitive control, so both groups showed lower accuracy, slower responses and more variable performance over time.
Does the practice finding prove that more meditation causes better attention?
No. Youths chose whether to practise, and those who did not practise already had lower accuracy at baseline. The authors adjusted for baseline scores, but self-selection still limits causal claims.
Why did the control group get a programme instead of nothing?
An active control with equal time, trained clinicians and group sessions helps rule out effects of attention, group cohesion and supportive adults, although its content differed in how emotionally engaging it was.
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