Guided mindfulness meditation as a priming strategy for reducing anxiety and facilitating motor skill learning

Mindfulness meditation (MM) is a promising cognitive strategy that may facilitate motor learning by improving attention and reducing anxiety. Our study aimed to investigate the effects of guided MM on motor learning in healthy young adults.

The study was conducted as randomised controlled trials where 24 meditation-naive participants underwent either a 10-min MM session or seated rest (CT) before performing circle tracing tasks using their (1) trained (dominant) hand, (2) untrained (non-dominant) hand, and (3) untrained hand to trace with an inverted screen display (a novel motor task). Post-learning, they performed a Parametric Go/No-Go (PGNG) cognitive test. Anxiety level was assessed via heart rates, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory - State subscale and Visual Analogue Scale-Anxiety (VAS-A).

Heart rates were lowered during guided MM (F _3.3,36.6 = 3.495, p = 0.022) with reduction in VAS-A scores (p = 0.012) after a single session of MM, indicating lowered anxiety. Only the MM group demonstrated learning effects for the trained hand task (+4.2% in accuracy; p < 0.001) while no differences were observed for the untrained hand and novel motor learning tasks. PGNG test results revealed that cognitive functions such as inhibitory control, sustained attention, and processing speeds remained unaltered between groups.

Our findings suggest that a brief guided MM session reduced anxiety levels and facilitated the learning of simple motor tasks. Future studies may explore the use of extended MM sessions and/or regular meditation practice to elicit cognitive benefits for facilitating novel or complex motor learning.