Improving Cognition in Normally Aging Older Adults: A Randomized Controlled Trial of Mindfulness Meditation (Samatha) as a Treatment for Attentional Inhibitory Deficits
Year: 2011
Type: article
Study designs: Randomized Controlled Trial, Clinical Trial
Abstract: According to Hasher and Zacks's (1988) Inhibitory Deficit Theory (IDT), a decline in the ability to inhibit task-irrelevant information from grabbing one's attention is the underlying cause for agerelated differences in cognitive abilities.Unlike some other theories of cognitive aging, IDT provides a leverage point available to older adults for a low-cost, non-pharmaceutical intervention that could prevent or at least slow the decline in cognitive functioning with age: attentional functioning, or more specifically, inhibitory attentional functioning.This study investigated the efficacy of attentional process training in the form of meditation (samatha) on the neuropsychological functioning of cognitively intact older adults.Forty-two community dwelling adults (average age 73 years) participated in a 4-week, randomized wait-list-controlled clinical trial.Compliance with twice-weekly attendance and at-home practice, and a self-evaluation of achievement at the end of the training indicated that older adults can and will learn samatha.Objective efficacy measures consisted of participants' change scores on the Trail Making Test (TMT) and the Reading-with-Distraction Task (RwDT) from pretreatment baseline to assessment after completion of the experimental group's samatha training.The Attention-Related Cognitive Errors Scale (ARCES) and the Everyday Memory Failures Scale (MFS) were used as subjective measures.Improvement on the RwDT was statistically significant (d = .75),suggesting that the intervention had a beneficial effect on inhibitory attentional functioning.Improvement on TMT-B (d = .40)did not reach statistical significance.Hence the study failed to provide strong evidence that the 4-week intervention could effect improvement in cognitive functioning beyond attention.MFS and ARCES change scores had small, statistically non-significant improvements, indicating that, on average, participants did not perceive improvement in their memory and attentional functioning.Implications for practice and further research and the study's strengths and limitations are discussed.all those who generously helped me along the way.Thank you, Dr. James Rogers, my advisor, for discussing ideas and guiding me to a successful conclusion.Thanks also to my committee members Drs.Kevin P. Kaut, John Queener, and Charles Waehler, for the excellent training you provided to me as professors, for the high standards for research you uphold, and for your commitment to this study.I am especially appreciative of all that Dr. Paula Hartman-Stein has done for me, not only serving on my committee but long before that for the
Author: Jeanette S. Biermann
Institution: University of Akron
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2596962534