Meditation to Improve Concentration Among Children with Auditory Processing Disorder

Abstract

The author reports on a two-year longitudinal intervention examining the effect of meditation to improve concentration among children affected with auditory processing disorder (APD). The treatment group comprised 212 APD-affected children across eight Asian and African cities and an equal number were randomly assigned to the control group. Results showed positive postmeditation effect on the treatment group. Meditation had greater positive effect on treatment group children from African cities, boys, Christians, those whose primary caregivers were their mothers, only children, those who also attended the five additional voluntary meditation rounds and who self-practiced regularly. Self-practice was the most significant predictor. The intervention promotes the use of meditation to improve concentration of the target group. Variations based on indigenous belief systems as well as more intensive programs for girls and children from alternative family setups would be required for greater impact on the outcome measure.

KEYWORDS:

• Auditory processing disorder
• children
• longitudinal intervention
• meditation
• spiritual techniques

Informed consent

Informed consent was sought from all the study participants and their parents/guardians.

Ethical approval

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the National Association of Professional Social Work in India and the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000.

Disclosure statement

No conflicts of interest are to be reported for this article.

Additional information

Funding

There is no registered funder to report for this submission. The author acknowledges the generous contributions of individual philanthropists based in Mumbai and Pretoria and committed to the issues of APD-affected children, in sponsoring Flipkart and Amazon gift vouchers for study participants and control group as well as the honorarium for nodal persons, on grounds of anonymity.