Mindfulness Enhances Cognitive Functioning: A Meta-Analysis of 111 Randomized Controlled Trials

Background: In theory, habitually exercising mindfulness skills can improve cognitive functioning abilities. However, no comprehensive quantitative reviews of the efficacy of MBIs on global and unique cognitive subdomains exist to date. Method: This meta-analysis examined the effects of MBIs on global cognition and 15 cognitive subdomains. Inclusion criteria: meditation naïve participants; participants randomly assigned to MBIs or no-treatment, waitlist, or active control; outcome measures included at least one behavioral cognitive assessment or subjective cognitive functioning measure; teaching mindfulness skills was the primary treatment focus. Exclusion criteria: inadequate data to calculate effect sizes; MBIs included only one session; control condition that contained any MBI form. Robust variance estimation and moderator analyses controlling for presence of reported treatment fidelity were conducted. Results: One-hundred-and-eleven RCTs (n = 9,538) met eligibility criteria. MBIs had small-to-moderate significant effects on global cognition, executive attention, WM accuracy, inhibition accuracy, shifting accuracy, sustained attention, and subjective cognitive functioning (vs. waitlist/no-treatment, average g = 0.257–0.643; vs. active controls, average g = 0.192–0.394). MBIs did not impact executive functioning (EF) latency indices, verbal fluency, processing speed, episodic memory, and cognitive error. Treatment effects were stronger for those with elevated psychiatric symptoms compared to healthy controls, and medical samples, studies with complete-case (vs. intention-to-treat) analysis, face-to-face (vs. self-guided) delivery, and use of non-standard MBI (vs. standard mindfulness-based stress reduction or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy). Conclusion: MBIs consistently yielded small-to-moderate yet practically meaningful effect sizes on global cognition and six cognitive subdomains that captured accuracy vs. latency-based indices of EF and sustained accuracy.