Want to do well on that upcoming test? Consider a little meditation, a new study in the journal Mindfulness suggests.
Researchers from George Mason University and the University of Illinois conducted their study on college students in a psychology class. Some of the students were shown how to meditate before listening to a lecture, while others didn't meditate before the lecture. Then, after the lecture, they all took a quiz -- and those who meditated did better on the quiz than those who didn't.
Specifically, one of the experiments conducted in the study showed that meditation had such a strong impact on the quiz scores, it was even able to predict students' passing or failing the quiz.
Interestingly, researchers found that the meditation's effect was even more pronounced in freshmen classes.
"Personally, I have found meditation to be helpful for mental clarity, focus and self-discipline," study researcher Jared Rambsurg, who is a doctoral student at the University of Illinois, said in a statement. "I think that if mindfulness can improve mental clarity, focus and self-discipline, then it might be useful in a variety of settings and for a variety of goals."
This is certainly not the first time mindfulness has been shown in a study to help with academics. A study published last month in the journal Psychological Science showed that mindfulness helped students' memory and reading comprehension before taking the verbal reasoning portion of the GRE.
"Our results suggest that cultivating mindfulness is an effective and efficient technique for improving cognitive function, with widereaching consequences," the researchers of that study, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, wrote.