Meditation proved to be able to improve children's performance and reduce stress
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In recent years, meditation (mindfulness) has been attracting attention from people around the world for its effects on improving work performance and reducing stress. A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced the results of a study that 'mindfulness can improve children's performance and reduce stress.'
Two studies reveal benefits of mindfulness for middle school students | MIT News
http://news.mit.edu/2019/mindfulness-mental-health-benefits-students-0826
Mindfulness training reduces stress and amygdala reactivity to fearful faces in middle-school children.- PsycNET
Greater Mindfulness is Associated With Better Academic Achievement in Middle School-Caballero-2019-Mind, Brain, and Education-Wiley Online Library
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mbe.12200
John Gabrieli, professor of brain science and cognitive science at MIT, said, “Mindfulness is the ability to focus on 'now', not on external matters or on your own thoughts. If you can concentrate on the previous teacher and homework, it should help you learn. '
The research team conducted an experiment to confirm the effect of mindfulness by dividing 100 students enrolled in 6th graders in the United States (6th graders in Japan) into two groups. One group had daily mindfulness training for eight weeks and the other group did not have mindfulness training. Mindfulness training was designed to help students focus on their breathing and focus on the present, not the past or the future.
In the group that did mindfulness training, students reported that their stress had decreased, while in the group that did not train, no decrease in stress was reported. In addition, students who conducted mindfulness training also reported that negative emotions such as sadness and anger were reduced.
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Forty students who participated in the study participated in an experiment to measure the activity of the amygdala, which is responsible for the processing of emotional responses, before and after the experiment. In this experiment, students looked at the faces of people expressing various emotions, and observed how active the amygdala was when they saw them.
Students who reported high stress levels at the start of the experiment said that the activity of the amygdala became active when they saw faces expressing 'fear'. In this way, people who experience a lot of stress are known to have a strong negative response to adverse events, saying, “A strong amygdala response to negative things There is evidence that is associated with the risk of high depression, ”Gabrieli points out.
And the children who did mindfulness training had lower stress levels before the experiment, and the activity of the amygdala on the faces expressing fear was also weakened. The team believes that mindfulness can help prevent or alleviate stress-related mood disorders. Richard Davidson , professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin , said, “This study is the first rigorous study that has demonstrated that mindfulness training benefits children's behavioral and neural aspects. It ’s one of them. ”
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The research team also conducts research that evaluates and analyzes children's mindfulness trends using questionnaires, in addition to research that actually conducts mindfulness training. First, the research team is based on the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale for over 2,000 students enrolled in the United States from 5th grade (5th grade elementary school in Japan) to 8th grade (3rd grade junior high school in Japan). Conducted a questionnaire. From the question “how concentrated are you in action,” the research team assessed how mindful the students are.
The research team compared the results with students' academic performance, standardized test scores across the state, attendance, and number of suspensions. Then, it turned out that the students who showed a more mindfulness tendency had higher academic scores, and the number of absences and suspensions was lower. “There has never been a quantitative study of whether children with a strong mindfulness tendency are likely to do well at school,” Gabrieli said, this study is mindfulness. Arguing that it is the first to show the relationship between the intellectual property and school life.
“I think it is likely to be beneficial to incorporate mindfulness training into the daily curriculum in the classroom,” Gabrieli says. On the other hand, since mindfulness training is meaningful to continue in the long term, he expressed his view that daily training is important to benefit from mindfulness.
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