Chanting and meditation: an 8-week intervention to promote executive functions in school-age children

Abstract

The present study investigated the effectiveness of a newly developed 8-week meditation program, which included chanting and meditation, on executive functions (EFs) in school-age children. Twenty-five students assigned to an experimental group participated in the meditation program, engaging in daily and weekly activities for 8 weeks. Another 25 students served as a control group and participated in regular school activities. Pretest and posttest assessments included the n-back task for working memory, the go/no-go task for inhibition, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST) for cognitive flexibility. A mixed repeated measures ANOVA was conducted to analyze interaction effects, within-group differences, and between-group differences. The experimental group demonstrated greater improvement compared to the control group across several measures: (1) reaction time in the 1-back task, (2) correct responses in the no-go condition of the go/no-go task, and (3) percentage of correct responses, errors, perseverative errors, non-perseverative errors, perseverative responses, and conceptual level responses in the WCST (p < 0.001). These findings underscore the potential benefits of an 8-week school-based meditation program incorporating chanting and meditation for enhancing EFs in school-age children.