Widhölzl, Hanna-Sophia Fee (2022) Does Mindfulness Meditation Facilitate Tacit Coordination? – An EEG Study on Working Memory and Theory of Mind. Bachelor thesis, Psychology.
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Abstract
Every day, our human ability of perspective-taking, also referred to as mentalising, is taxed to tacitly coordinate in interindividual contexts. Theory of Mind (ToM) was shown to strongly depend on Working Memory (WM) capacities as it involves the maintenance and manipulation of social information in one’s mind to successfully model and predict a partner’s beliefs, intentions, and actions. Previous research examined promising interventions, such as Mindfulness Meditation (MM), to improve ToM. As ambiguous conclusions emerged, the current study aims at elucidating the link between WM and ToM by investigating the effectiveness of an eight-week internet-based MM course in strengthening those functions. Participants performed a computerised tacit coordination experiment twice with their romantic partners. Whilst one partner underwent the MM intervention in the meantime, the control participant did not receive any training. EEG hyperscanning was employed to examine within-subjects and between-groups differences in P3b amplitudes since this ERP component was consistently reported to correlate with WM. Our main hypothesis that participants in the experimental group exhibit larger P3b amplitudes at the post-measurement was not supported. Yet, behavioural analyses suggest dyads to perform the task more accurately following the MM intervention. Notably, our small sample size (n = 12) and thus, little statistical power, should be regarded as the limiting bottleneck for our results’ reliability.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Bachelor) |
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| Supervisor name: | Vugt, M.K. van |
| Degree programme: | Psychology |
| Differentiation route: | Cognitive Psychology and Psychophysiology (CPP) [Bachelor Psychology] |
| Date Deposited: | 26 Apr 2022 10:49 |
| Last Modified: | 26 Apr 2022 10:49 |
| URI: | http://gmwpublic.studenttheses.ub.rug.nl/id/eprint/420 |
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