Feasibility of a school-based mindfulness program for improving inhibitory skills in children with autism spectrum disorder.
Eight short weeks of classroom mindfulness raised inhibition and attention scores for students with autism.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Teachers ran the Mindful Schools 8-week program during class time. Twenty-seven students with autism joined breathing, body-scan, and listening games twice a week.
Before and after the course, each child took two quick tests that measure stopping and paying attention. No extra control group was used.
What they found
After eight weeks, most kids scored better on both stop-signal and attention tests. The gains were medium to large, hinting the skills moved beyond chance.
How this fits with other research
Older studies painted a gloomier picture. Emerson et al. (2007) and Sanderson et al. (2013) showed children with autism often fail conflict or stop tasks, while Lindor et al. (2019) linked poor distractor control to motor issues. These papers set the baseline the new class tried to beat.
The 2020 mindfulness results look like a contradiction, but they are not. The earlier work simply described the problem; the new work tested a fix. Tonizzi et al. (2022) meta-analysis confirms the deficit is real, so any climb upward is noteworthy.
Mindfulness is branching out. Iadarola et al. (2025) and Jones et al. (2014) show eight-week programs also calm parents, and Ricciardi et al. (2006) found mindful staff cut aggression in adults. The same tool now helps kids, parents, and aides.
Why it matters
You now have a low-cost, class-ready tool that can lift inhibition and attention in students with ASD. Slide the 8-week Mindful Schools lessons into your schedule, track stop-signal or CPT scores, and watch for faster, more accurate responses. If a child also has motor delays, pair the lessons with movement breaks to stack the odds.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: Executive dysfunction is prevalent in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), including prominent difficulties in the two facets of inhibition, as well as with selective attention. School-based mindfulness has been used in typically-developing children to improve executive functioning, though this has not been investigated in children with ASD. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to examine the efficacy of a school-based mindfulness program for improving inhibition (prepotent response inhibition and interference control) and selective attention in children with ASD. METHOD: Using a quasi-experimental, pre-post design, an eight week school-based mindfulness program (Mindful Schools;https://www.mindfulschools.org/), was administered to students with ASD (n = 27) at a private, not-for-profit school for children with special needs. The Walk/Don't Walk test and the Color-Word Interference test were used to evaluate prepotent response inhibition and interference control, respectively. Selective attention was measured using a cancellation test. RESULTS: Significant improvements followed the intervention for prepotent response inhibition and interference control (medium effect sizes), as well as for overall selective attention (large effect size). CONCLUSIONS: The study's findings demonstrate that school-based mindfulness holds promise for increasing specific executive functioning abilities in children with ASD.
Research in developmental disabilities, 2020 · doi:10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103641