Mindfulness as cognitive and emotion regulation strategy to promote resilience in children

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Mindfulness is commonly defined as a purposeful and non-judgmental way of attention regulation which can be trained using established methods. The benefits of mindfulness practice for mental health of adults has been demonstrated by a wide range of empirical studies (Brown & Ryan, 2003). However, effects during childhood and adolescence have been investigated to a smaller degree. Early adolescence is marked by rapid changes in the development of the prefrontal cortex which can be interpreted in terms of a critical window for influences of learning. Hence, there is reason to assume that children who have not yet reached puberty benefit from mindfulness training to a particularly great extent. Furthermore, due to heightened vulnerability for developing mental disorders, promoting executive control, emotion regulation and well-being is of particular importance at this stage of neurocognitive development (Sanger & Dorjee, 2015; Spear, 2013). Several empirical studies have already demonstrated that these desirable mental properties can be improved by mindfulness training (e.g., Jha et al., 2010; Lyvers et al., 2014; Poehlmann-Tynan et al., 2016). However, there is a lack of research with children which on the one hand satisfies high methodological standards, i.e., involving control groups and objective measures, and which on the other hand considers underlying mechanisms and their interrelations. Various models agree on the assumption that mindfulness training in a first step fosters executive functions which in a second step promotes emotion regulation. In a third step, this is to result in enhanced well-being. This process would have lasting benefits such as an enhancement of school achievement and self-regulation, which are evidently associated with later career success, health, and high socioeconomic status (Moffitt et al., 2011). The envisaged project examines this prediction in a study with elementary school children using a randomized pre-post-follow-up design. After random assignment participants receive either an 8-week mindfulness treatment by trained teachers at school or no special intervention. Immediately before and after the intervention period executive control, emotion regulation, and well-being of the children are assessed by both objective and subjective measures. All tests are repeated after a 3-month follow-up interval so that effects of the training can be monitored over a longer period of time. Due to sound experimental design and valid measurement methods, the project advances basic as well as applied research, since it allows for both conclusions on underlying mechanisms of mindfulness, and evidence-based steps regarding the implementation of mindfulness training in school settings.