Applying Mindfulness Exercises to Improve Emotion Regulation and Flexibility in Pre-Adolescents

Emotions and pre-adolescents are not always best friends. Not yet fully developed prefrontal cortex makes pre-adolescents emotional experiences more intense than other age groups. Thus, the aim of this study was to use Mindfulness to improve the emotions regulation and flexibility in pre-adolescents. The theoretical framework of the research has been developed using the approach of neurocognitive and developmental psychology. This study was conducted in a quasi-experimental design with pre-test and post-test with two experimental and control groups. The statistical population included all female students studying in the fifth grade of primary school in Tehran. Among these, 24 were purposefully selected and randomly assigned to two groups (experimental 12 and control 12). The Mindfulness protocol was presented to the experimental group for 12 weeks. The variables were evaluated by the Iranian standardized version of the Shields and Cichetti emotion regulation checklist. Reliability of the test by Cronbach's alpha method is 0.74. Also, the validity of the test structure Confirmed by the implementation of confirmatory and exploratory factor analysis. The obtained data were analyzed by SPSS using descriptive statistics and analysis of covariance. The results showed that Mindfulness exercises in the post-test between the experimental group and the control group in the variables "Negative Emotion Regulation" (F=14.84, p= 0.001) and "Emotional Flexibility" (F=15.32, P = 0.002) was significant. In other words, applying mindfulness exercises has been able to improve the two components of negative emotion regulation and emotional flexibility in pre-adolescents.