Effectiveness of Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on Working memory and Problem-solving in sub-clinical anxiety sample

Anxiety is known as a common problem in the general population. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy on working memory and problem solving.

A randomized controlled trial design was selected. The study population included all students between 20 and 30 years old in Tehran, from which 26 subjects were selected based on inclusion and exclusion criteria and randomly divided to experimental and control groups. Subjects in each group were tested before and after the intervention (8 sessions of MBCT) and in the follow-up phase (3 months) with the tools of the Tower of London (computer -based), Forward-backward Digit Span, Letter Number Sequencing test, as well as, the Beck's Anxiety Questionnaire.

results of MANCOVA showed that the experimental group was significantly different from the control group in the post-test and follow-up stages in working memory and anxiety. Significantly differences were found between the two groups for problem solving in the indicators of trial time, total time, number of errors and the number of correct trials, whereas no difference observed for planning time in problem solving.

According to the findings of this study, MBCT training through anxiety reduction can improve working memory capacity and problem solving components except the planning time.