Trial reportEmotion (Washington, D.C.)2017
Brief mindfulness meditation training reduces mind wandering: The critical role of acceptance.
Trial report in Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 54 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
54 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The Relative Accuracy of Different Methods for Measuring Mind Wandering Subtypes: A Systematic Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- A meta-analytical review of the impact of mindfulness on creativity: Framing current lines of research and defining moderator variables.Psychonomic bulletin & review · 2023Pooled it
- The efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions on mental health among university students: a systematic review and meta-analysis.Frontiers in public health · 2023Pooled it
- Virtual mindfulness interventions to promote well-being in adults: A mixed-methods systematic review.Journal of affective disorders · 2022Pooled it
- Brief mindfulness training for negative affectivity: A systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · 2018Pooled it
- Effects of mindfulness training on sustained attention and mind-wandering in older adults: results from the HealthyAgers randomized controlled trial.The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences · 2026Trial
- Mindfulness training fosters a positive outlook during acute stress: A randomized controlled trial.Emotion (Washington, D.C.) · 2025Trial
- A multisite feasibility randomized clinical trial of mindfulness-based resilience training for aggression, stress, and health in law enforcement officers.BMC complementary medicine and therapies · 2024Trial
- Which adolescents are well-suited to app-based mindfulness training? A randomized clinical trial and data-driven approach for personalized recommendations.Journal of consulting and clinical psychology · 2022Trial
- The effects of an internet-based mindfulness meditation intervention on electrophysiological markers of attention.International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology · 2020Trial
- Mindfulness-Based Blood Pressure Reduction (MB-BP): Stage 1 single-arm clinical trial.PloS one · 2019Trial
- How mindfulness training promotes positive emotions: Dismantling acceptance skills training in two randomized controlled trials.Journal of personality and social psychology · 2018Trial
- Feasibility of Formal Mindfulness-Based Stress-Resilience Training Among Surgery Interns: A Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA surgery · 2018Trial
- Brain resting state functional connectivity changes with aerobic exercise, and mindfulness: A narrative review.Sports medicine and health science · 2026Review
- Was that really me? Relationships between memory and sense of self in people with maladaptive daydreaming.The British journal of clinical psychology · 2026Article
- Awareness of being: a computational neurophenomenological model of mindfulness, mind-wandering, and meta-attentional control.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- The effectiveness of a proposed counseling program in reducing mental wandering and digital stress among the students of the scientific departments in Afif, Shaqra University.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- The two correlations between Academic Stress and Subjective Academic Achievement: the mediating roles of Emotion Regulation and Cognitive Decline, and the moderating role of Mind Wandering.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
- Examining the Impact of Brief Mindfulness Practice on Sustained Attention, Attentional Inhibition and Convergent Thinking.Journal of Intelligence · 2025Article
- Dispositional mindfulness and anxiety: how do they relate to aging and word retrieval?Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Mindfulness meditation programs, which train individuals to monitor their present-moment experience in an open or accepting way, have been shown to reduce mind wandering on standardized tasks in several studies. Here we test 2 competing accounts for how mindfulness training reduces mind wandering, evaluating whether the attention-monitoring component of mindfulness training alone reduces mind wandering or whether the acceptance training component is necessary for reducing mind wandering. Healthy young adults (N = 147) were randomized to either a 3-day brief mindfulness training condition incorporating instruction in both attention monitoring and acceptance, a mindfulness training condition incorporating attention monitoring instruction only, a relaxation training condition, or an active reading-control condition. Participants completed measures of dispositional mindfulness and treatment expectancies before the training session on Day 1 and then completed a 6-min Sustained Attention to Response Task (SART) measuring mind wandering after the training session on Day 3. Acceptance training was important for reducing mind wandering, such that the attention-monitoring plus acceptance mindfulness training condition had the lowest mind wandering relative to the other conditions, including significantly lower mind wandering than the attention-monitoring only mindfulness training condition. In one of the first experimental mindfulness training dismantling studies to-date, we show that training in acceptance is a critical driver of mindfulness-training reductions in mind wandering. This effect suggests that acceptance skills may facilitate emotion regulation on boring and frustrating sustained attention tasks that foster mind wandering, such as the SART. (PsycINFO Database Record
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.