Mindfulness
Does mindfulness training make thinking more flexible, and how?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
An eight-week mindfulness course made stressed adults more cognitively flexible than a waitlist group, and this benefit ran through learning not to react to their own thoughts and feelings.
Study at a glance
- Design
- RCT — Stratified randomisation to 8-week MBSR or waitlist; mindfulness facets measured at baseline, week 3, week 6 and post-treatment; bootstrapped mediation models.
- N
- N=54 · 54 randomised (26 MBSR, 28 waitlist) and analysed by intention-to-treat with imputation; six MBSR and five waitlist participants dropped out.
- Population
- Stressed but non-clinical adults in Beijing (mostly women, highly educated) with no prior MBSR/MBCT experience
- Outcome
- Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (post-treatment); perceived stress; Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire facets as mediators
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Key findings
Both groups improved in cognitive flexibility, but the MBSR group scored higher than the waitlist group after training (a medium-sized group-by-time effect). Non-reactivity grew faster in the MBSR group, and non-reactivity at week 6 fully mediated the training effect on flexibility, accounting for 53.94% of the total effect; week 3 non-reactivity and non-judgment at either time did not mediate. Surprisingly, perceived stress fell just as much in the waitlist group, so MBSR showed no extra stress reduction.
Methodology
Stressed adults without a psychiatric diagnosis were randomly assigned to an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course or a waitlist control, 54 people in total. Participants filled in questionnaires on mindfulness facets, cognitive flexibility and perceived stress before training, at week 3, at week 6 and after the course. The researchers tested whether changes in two mindfulness skills, non-reactivity and non-judgment, measured during the course, explained the post-course change in cognitive flexibility.
Limitations
The sample was small, mostly female and highly educated, so power was limited (the week 6 mediation had estimated power of 0.69) and generalisation is uncertain. A no-treatment waitlist cannot separate mindfulness-specific effects from attention, expectation or group contact, and participants were not blind. All measures were self-report, and cognitive flexibility was a questionnaire rather than a behavioural task; home practice time was not recorded.
How this study connects
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