Summary: The Mindfulness Enhances Episodic Memory Performance

The Mindfulness Enhances Episodic Memory Performance article talks about the effects of mindfulness on attention and working memory. The article talks about the three studies which used different methods to examine whether mindfulness would enhance episodic memory. The first study is correlational study, check the benefit and characteristics of mindfulness in episodic memory performance in the Remember- Know (R-K) paradigm. The second study evaluates the usefulness of trait and state mindfulness on episodic memory experimentally. The third study check s whether brief training in focused attention (FA) mindfulness training, relative to both normative and distracted states of mind. In the first study, participants finished two measures of trait mindfulness emphasizing present-centered attention and R-K task. “State mindfulness was assessed using the 5-item state variant of the MAAS [41]

The method was to make all participants to listen through headphones to two brief audio male and female recordings. “The male-voice mindfulness training was derived, with slight adaptation, from an exercise in[62].The female-voice recorded mindfulness instruction was adapted from[63].Both provided guided instruction to promote a state of receptive attention to present-moment sensations in the body, and particularly to the physical sensations associated with breathing. The recordings also instructed the listener to briefly mentally note the occurrence of thoughts and emotions any time they noticed their mind had wandered format tending to the breath, and to gently re gather their attention to focus on the physical sensations associated with breathing” Brown (2016)(8).The study tries to see the speaker sex has some effect on R-k outcomes, but the study could not verify whether instructional speaker sex had some effect on the R-K