A short mindfulness induction might increase women’s mental rotation performance

Abstract

The study aimed to investigate the effects of an embodied mindfulness treatment on chronometric mental rotation. Forty-four women and 47 men participated and were randomly divided into two groups: a mindfulness induction group and a control group. They completed two sets of 150 mental rotation tasks with cube figures each. Subjective cognitive effort (measured after each block), reaction time, and accuracy were analyzed using linear mixed models with the factors of time, mindfulness, angular disparity, and gender. The significant finding was a three-way interaction between pre-post testing, mindfulness, and gender for reaction times. This interaction suggests that women might benefit more from the mindfulness induction, while men may benefit more from the control condition. The analysis of subjective cognitive effort indicates that women and men perceive the same cognitive effort when solving cube-figure tasks.