Date of Award

4-2021

Document Type

Master's Project

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

STEM Education & Professional Studies

Program/Concentration

Occupational and Technical Studies

Committee Director

Michael F. Kosloski, Jr.

Abstract

Although research has shown that long-term guided meditation and mindfulness practices improve attention, memory, and processing speed, the research on the effects of short-term self-guided meditation on improving cognitive processing and memory is limited. This study examined whether a brief self-guided meditation practice improved cognitive processing speed and memory capacity. The participants engaged in a five-day program which consisted of taking an online mental speed test and memory recall test, then meditated for 15 minutes a day, for five days. After completing the five-day meditation program, the participants took the two cognitive processing tests again. The results on the test scores showed an average increase in three points in the mental test and two points in the memory test scores. A paired-sample equal variance t-test determined there was no significant statistical difference made by the five-day meditation experiment. These findings in this study build on the knowledge and understanding of the impact of short-term meditation.

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