Study Description: Mindfulness and Working Memory

A cognitive psychologist wanted to investigate whether mindfulness meditation affects working memory capacity in undergraduate students. Previous research had indicated that mindfulness practices generally improve immediate cognitive performance.

The psychologist used a repeated measures design with a sample of 18 undergraduate students.

• Condition A: Participants completed a 15-minute guided mindfulness meditation session before undergoing a digit span test.
• Condition B: The same participants spent 15 minutes reading a neutral textbook passage in silence before undergoing the digit span test.

At the end of each condition, the maximum length of correctly recalled digits was recorded for each student.