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Hypotheses

Richard Chambers

There are thus six hypotheses to be evaluated here:

1. Following the intervention, participants' self-reports of psychological wellbeing will be significantly more improved than those observed in a comparison group who complete repeated testing over the same period without completing any meditation training.

2. Following the intervention, participants' self-report measures of mindfulness and rumination will be significantly more improved than those of the comparison group.

2a. Furthermore, it is hypothesised that these improvements in metacognitive processing will mediate the benefits of mindfulness practice on psychological wellbeing

3. Decreased scores on the participants' self-report measures of rumination will correlate significantly with improved scores on the self-report measures of mindfulness.

3a. Furthermore, it is hypothesised that, following the intervention, participants' decreased scores on measures of mindfulness, and concomitantly decreased scores on measures of rumination, will correlate with improved scores on self-report measures of affect.

4. Following the intervention, meditators' executive control capacities, including their capacity for working memory (as assessed by the Digit Span Backward task) and their set-shifting ability (as assessed by the internal switching task), will be significantly more improved those observed in a comparison group who complete repeated testing over the same period without completing any meditation training.

5. The improvement in performance on the switching tasks which use affective stimuli will be greater than that for tasks which use non-affective (i.e. neutral) stimuli, due to the meditators' enhanced capacity to control their reactions to affective stimuli.

6. The degree of improvement in executive function (as measured by working memory capacity and switching tasks) will correlate with improved psychological wellbeing and metacognitive processing.

6a. Furthermore, it is hypothesised that these improvements in executive function will mediate the benefits of mindfulness practice on psychological wellbeing and metacognitive processing.

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