NY Times health blog: mindful meditation increases test scores

Parents Forum
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<p>How Meditation Might Boost Your Test Scores
By JAN HOFFMAN</p>

<p>Mindfulness meditation, the ancient and flourishing practice that increases awareness of random thoughts and redirects attention to the present moment, has been used to manage stress, depression and even chronic pain. But can it improve test scores?</p>

<p>snip</p>

<p>The group that took mindfulness training, however, mind-wandered less and performed better on tests of working memory capacity and reading comprehension. For example, before the training, their average G.R.E. verbal score was 460. Two weeks later, it was 520.</p>

<p>Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied brain function in long-term and novice mindful meditators, offered this analogy: “You can improve the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the noise. Decreasing mind-wandering is doing just that.”</p>

<p>complete article:
[How</a> Meditation Might Boost Your Test Scores - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/how-meditation-might-boost-your-test-s\]How”>http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/03/how-meditation-might-boost-your-test-s\)
cores/</p>

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<p>Ill send this to my D.
( before she sends it to me- she is always telling me I need to meditate)</p>

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<p>Interesting - D took a class extracurricular at college on it, she really liked it. I read a book on it.</p>

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<p>Speaking of meditation…let’s consider the numerology of the above two time stamps: (1)2:22 and 4:44 respectively. Google it. Interesting coincidence or something more?</p>