Reduced Anxiety Following Mindfulness and Adaptive Working Memory Training in Women with Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a life-threatening disease that leaves survivors vulnerable to clinical levels of psychological disorder. Expanding on recent research that indicates both mindfulness and working memory training can reduce levels of emotional vulnerability separately, we investigate how the combined effects of these interventions impact emotion regulation in female survivors of breast cancer.

Participants completed a 10-day course of either mindfulness-based meditation (Mindfulness), mindfulness-based meditation and working memory training (Mindfulness N-Back), working memory training (N-Back) or, for the control group, a 1-back task (1-back). Assessment of emotional vulnerability took place at pre- and post-intervention, as well as at 1- and 6-month follow-up time points to assess whether any observed effects would persist.

Findings indicated that an independent course of either mindfulness-based meditation or working memory training, as well as a combined course of both, can result in reductions in anxious symptomatology compared to an active control group. Whilst effects were sustained for all experimental training groups (Mindfulness, N-Back, Mindfulness N-Back) at 1-month post-intervention, at 6-month follow-up effects were only apparent for the independent groups (Mindfulness, N-Back).

This study suggests that the engagement of attentional control processes through both independent and combined courses of mindfulness-based meditation and adaptive working memory training can result in sustained reductions in anxiety symptomatology in women diagnosed with breast cancer.