Differential Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Conditions on Repetitive Negative Thinking and Subjective Time Perspective: a Randomized Active-Controlled Study

Objectives: Most mindfulness-based interventions include different kinds of meditation. Preliminary findings suggest that these techniques could work on diverse cognitive and psychological processes, such as attention, mind wandering and emotion regulation. The present study aimed at disentangling the effects of three mindfulness techniques on mental rumination and subjective time perspective. Methods: 75 young, meditation-naïve, healthy participants were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: mindful breathing, body scan, observing-thoughts meditation and an active control condition. The meditation groups practiced mindfulness daily and attended weekly group meetings for 8 weeks, while the control group was involved in book reading and discussing on a book on mindfulness meditation. We assessed via self-report measures participants’ mindfulness skills, ruminative thinking and attitude towards time, pre- and post-training. Before the start of the trainings, we evaluated participants’ level of anxiety, depression and personality traits. Results: In all meditation conditions, analysis of covariance showed a significant improvement in mindfulness skills compared to the control group. Also, we found a specific effect of mindful breathing in reducing participants’ tendency to brooding and in increasing their positive vision of the future, compared to all other conditions. Conclusions: Our findings showed a shared beneficial effect of the three mindfulness practices on practitioners’ awareness. As expected, we found also some differential effects: through the practice of breathing meditation practitioners were able appeared to train more effectively the ability to disengage from maladaptive ruminative thoughts, which could be may have reflected in a more optimistic attitude toward the future.