The Association of Mindfulness on Executive Functioning (EF) in College Students

Recent research has shown mindfulness practices to be correlated with traits frequently associated with high Executive Functioning (EF) individuals such as greater attention to specific tasks, greater working memory capacity, and the improved ability to inhibit behaviors or emotions. These three traits are highly correlated with each other, and provide an accurate assessment of an individual’s level of Executive Functioning. This study was designed to examine how individual traits associated with Mindfulness such as ‘non-judgement’ can influence attention, working memory and inhibition. This study used three self-administered questionnaires to assess traits associated with mindful individuals and three EF tests to measure performance in inhibition, task shifting and updating working memory tasks. Results showed that certain mindfulness variables from the Freberg Mindfulness Inventory and Five Facet Mindfulness Questioniare, were correlated with performance on working memory tasks while mindfulness experience was not.