Physiological Arousal Moderates the Effect of Mindfulness Meditation on Test Performance

The Importance of Test Perfromance

• According to the Noah Webster Educational Foundation, on average American students take 112 tests between kindergarten and their senior year of high school. That is about 8 tests per year.
• The grades of these tests can influence whether a student passes a class, moves onto the next grade, or graduates high school. Performance on other tests, such as the SAT and ACT can influence what college you get accepted to, or if you are able to get any scholarships. All of this is to say that that test performance is an important part of education and educators should do everything they can to help students improve their test performance. Previous research studies have found that practicing mindfulness can help improve students academic performance, so I was interested to see if mindfulness would impact test performance as well.

Independendent Variable - Mindfulness

• Construct definition
  • A mental state achieved through meditation that helps individuals focus their attention on the present moments while calmly acknowledging and accepting their emotions, thoughts, and bodily sensations.
• Operational definition
  • Mindfulness meditation was manipulated by having participants follow along with a one-minute meditation video that used a breathing exercise to create a feeling of mindfulness

Moderator - Physiological Arousal

• Construct definition
  • Increased heart rate
• Operational definition
  • Physiological arousal was manipulated by having participants follow along with a one-minute clip from a High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) in order to increase participants heart rate.

Dependent Variable - Test Performance

• Construct definition
  • The amount of questions an individual gets correct on a test.
• Operational definition
  • Test performance was measured by having participants complete at seven question math test.

Hypotheses

Picture of Figure of Actual Results

My Figure

Discussion

• One limitation was that this was an online study, so we could not control the environment or other variables that could affect the results.
• One strength was that we were looking at how physiological arousal moderates the effect of mindfulness on test performance on college students. Most research only looked at elementary or high school populations, so the college population has not been studied as much.
• One implication of this study is that a brief mindfulness meditation will not improve test performance no matter the level of physiological arousal, so it should not be used in the classroom to improve test performance.

More Research is Needed

While this research showed that a brief mindfulness mediation will not influence test performance no matter the level of physiological arousal, past research shows that mindfulness can improve other aspects of academic performance. The results of this study should inspire other researchers to investigate if using a longer mindfulness meditation will influence test performance and to investigate what other variables might help to improve test performance.

Kids taking a test