On the Practice of Mindfulness as a Tool for Cognitive Recovery

We spend much of our waking life engaging in effortful tasks, with these having the potential to induce unpleasant states of fatigue. Restorative breaks play an essential role in alleviating this exhaustion, however, research on the optimal ways to spend these breaks remains limited. This thesis consequently aims to examine whether breaks centered around the practice of mindfulness are more effective than unstructured breaks in facilitating the restoration of attentional resources, with the chosen measures of attentional functioning (mean reaction times, reaction time standard deviations and error-rates) being obtained from a computerised cognitive task. The thesis reviews theories of sustained attention, protocols for inducing cognitive fatigue, and the potential of mindfulness practice as a restorative tool, with the latter being examined by means of an empirical study conducted by the author, using Shalev et al.’s (2011) Continuous Performance Task to provide the aforementioned information about participants’ attentional functioning, as well as to induce the desired states of cognitive fatigue. The study was a randomized controlled trial, in which participants were divided into two groups that differed on the content of the 10 minute break, they were given between two sessions of the aforementioned CPT, with one group being administered an audio-guided mindfulness meditation, and the other being allowed to spend the break however they pleased (the control condition). Both break types did serve to effectively restore attentional resources and thereby optimal performance, though, antithetical to expectations, mindfulness did not demonstrate an advantage over the unstructured break condition, in which the primary activity was the use of smartphones. Overall, this research contributes to an understudied area, offering insights into optimal break design, though limitations and methodological challenges highlight the need for more research using robust experimental paradigms to evaluate mindfulness as a tool for cognitive recovery.