Mobile mindfulness meditation apps may improve attention

Studies suggest mindfulness meditation can improve cognition, but few researchers have examined whether virtual mindfulness meditation apps are effective. In a new eNeuro paper, researcher Andy Kim and colleagues from the University of Southern California have assessed attention control in adults following about a month of mindfulness meditation guided by a mobile app.

In participants of all ages, mindfulness improved attention control as measured by reliable eye movement tasks established to assess how quickly people orient their attention. A control group that listened to an audiobook did not have this cognitive improvement. Notably, self-reported measures of cognitive ability, including attention and distractibility, suggest that participants were not aware of the cognitive improvement from meditation.

According to the authors, they are among the first to measure cognitive improvements from mindfulness using a reliable eye task in addition to self-reporting surveys. Future work may probe whether longer-term mindfulness interventions strengthen the effects observed in this study.