Thinking flexibility may help explain distress changes during mindfulness programs
In two randomized trials, mindfulness participants improved in distress and flexibility in thinking. Changes moved together over time, suggesting a possible explanation without proving the mechanism.
Based on the published abstract. The full paper may contain additional methods, results and limitations.
The 30-second takeaway
Among people with high emotional distress, the mindfulness groups improved in anxiety, depression, general distress and cognitive flexibility—the ability to shift thinking or attention. The researchers linked earlier flexibility changes with later distress reductions. This supports a possible pathway, but the abstract gives no effect sizes or clear between-group estimates for these improvements.
The abstract reports significant improvement and statistical mediation without numerical effect estimates. Random assignment to a program does not itself prove that a measured change in thinking caused the later distress change.
What researchers found
Changes during the programs
Over 7 weeks, assessed measures improved in mindfulness participants; controls were a waitlist or another control group, but comparative effect estimates were not provided.
What mediation means
Mediation analysis asks whether changes in a proposed explanatory factor statistically account for changes in an outcome. Here, thinking flexibility was linked with later distress improvement, supporting an explanation that still needs causal confirmation.
Why repeated testing mattered
Repeated assessments let the researchers examine the order of changes during the program. A behavioral attention task also predicted later distress reductions, but these predictions do not establish that a particular attention pattern should be trained.
The original publication
Effect of cognitive flexibility in mindfulness intervention for emotional distress: Two randomized controlled trials.
Wang Z, Chen M, Hu A et al.
J Couns Psychol · 2025
- PubMed ID
- 40658552
- Record checked
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