The power of now: brief mindfulness induction led to increased randomness of clicking sequence

The capacity for random movement production is known to be limited in humans (e.g., Newell, Deutsch, & Morrison, 2000). We examined the effects of a brief mindfulness induction on random movement production because there are useful implications for variability in solving movement-related problems. The main task involved randomly clicking the 9 boxes in a 3 × 3 grid presented on a computer screen for five minutes. We characterized the sequence of clicking in terms of degrees of randomness, or periodicity, based on the fit, or probability, of the experimental data with its best fitting Bayesian network (4-click memory nodes) using the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) approach. Sixty-three participants were randomly assigned to either the experimental or the control condition. Mixed design repeated-measures ANOVA results show that the short mindfulness induction had a positive effect on the randomness of the sequence subsequently produced. This finding suggests that mindfulness may be a suitable strategy for increasing random movement behavior.