Immediate effect of meditation in children on performance in a letter cancellation task

Usually effect of meditation has been studied on adult population. Meditation treatment effects among youth are relatively unknown. There are growing tendency of anxious and Attention deficit hyperactive disorder in present generation. The present study was designed to compare a meditation session and an outdoor Mental play session and their effects in the level of concentration and anxiety in a group of 34 children participating in a International Youth Yoga Retreat. There were 17 participants in meditation (1) and outdoor mental play (2) session. Group Intervention (1) (M age = 11.82 yr., SD = 2.43) and Group Intervention (2) (M age = 12.59 yr., SD = 2.90). Assessments were done before and after every intervention in the two consecutive days that the experiment last, on December 2011. There were two categories of assessments; (i) six-letter cancellation task (SLCT), and (ii) anxiety assessment using visual analog scale (VAS). The level of attention in the meditation intervention is increased by 5.14 (p< 0.006) and in play group it increase by 3.17 (p< 0.096). The mean stress decrease in the meditation group was 1.36 (p< 0.019); in the play group it was only 0.05 (p< 0.93). The difference between the groups was significant at the 0.01 level of significance. Anxiety and stress reduction for children and adolescents is often approached by assessing and reducing a multiplicity of external causal factors. This study indicates that yoga relaxation and meditation practices hold considerable promise for increasing children’s’ resilience from within.