The Learning Clinic

Study Shows Meditation Sharpens Attention and Improves Focus

July 15, 2010 –

People who learn how to meditate using Buddhist techniques not only may find a bit of peace in life, but also can improve their attention and focus a new study shows.

Psychologist Katherine A. MacLean, PhD, and other researchers, signed up 30 people with an average age of 49 to go on a three-month meditation retreat in Colorado. Another 30 people in a comparison group went on a similar retreat.

The participants studied meditation techniques, such as concentrating on breathing, with Buddhist scholar and co-researcher B. Alan Wallace, PhD, of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies.

All participants were aficionados of meditation and had been on retreats before, but this time they were taught how to concentrate and asked to complete various tests. Also, volunteers attended group sessions twice daily and engaged in individual meditative practice for about six hours.

At three points during the retreat, the volunteers took a 30-minute computer test, during which they watched the screen as lines of various lengths flashed randomly in front of them. Most lines were the same length, but sometimes a shorter one would appear.

Volunteers were instructed to respond by clicking the computer mouse when a shorter line appeared in a test to measure their visual attention span and their ability to make distinctions.

Researchers say that as meditation training progressed, the volunteers who received meditation training got better at spotting the short lines compared to those who didn’t receive the training, suggesting it became easier to sustain attention.

The comparison group of volunteers went through identical training later and also improved concentration skills and the ability to differentiate the size of lines.

Lasting Improvements in Concentration

The improvement lasted for five months after the end of the retreat. Follow-up assessments were conducted five months after each retreat using laptop computers sent to the homes of participants.

“People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation and you get to be at peace with yourself,” MacLean says in a news release. “That’s what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted.”

The tasks the volunteers performed lasted 30 minutes and were very demanding, according to MacLean, who worked on the study as a graduate student at the University of California, Davis.

“Because the task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it’s kind of a perfect index of meditation training,” says MacLean, now of the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore.

The study is published in the July 2010 issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

10 Tips for Getting Ready for Your Exams

1. Go to sleep early the night before the exam. If you have trouble sleeping try reading a chapter of a non-school book or watching a bit of TV, this will help you relax and take your mind off the exams.

2. Eat well in the morning and the night before the exam. Your brain like the rest of your body needs fuel.

3. Make sure you have all your pens, pencils, set squares, calculator and ruler ready the night before. Make sure your calculator has a full battery for your maths, science and geography exams!

4. Do a small bit of revision in the morning but don’t do to much cramming because that will just stress you out. Make sure you look over the marking scheme and a possible timing scheme so you can get the very most out of every minute if the exam.

5. Come in plenty of time for your exam, rushing in late won’t help you or anyone.

6. Scan through the paper first don’t just dive straight into the first question. Read quickly through it and do you best question first. This way you will insure maximum marks for the work you have done if you run out of time.

7.  Always, always, always read the question fully! and answer the question your asked not the question you have studied for!

8. Keep your answers concise and to the point. Rambling will just waste time and paper as well as annoying the examiner. Planning your answers out before hand either on paper or in your head will help you keep to the point.

9. Stick to your timing scheme and try to use every minute if your exam. If your finished early read and reread over your work correcting any mistakes you find.

10. Always try your very best. Use every single once of your knowledge and common sense and write an answer for every single question even if it’s just a wild guess.

Good Luck!

The first few weeks of school are the perfect time to get rid of those bad habits and start afresh. Here is a list of little things you could do that will make a big difference both at school and at home when doing your homework and studying. Use these as goals and set yourself two or three goals every week. You will notice that bit by bit your work will improve and soon you will start to do better in tests! Good Luck!

My Goals Checklist