MOVELab Member John Chancey presents at APA 2018

Published by Murat Turk on September 26, 2018September 26, 2018

John Chancey, along with Ben Heddy, gave a poster presentation at the 2018 American Psychological Association Convention with their research, Mindfully Changing Minds: the influence of mindfulness on conceptual change.

Abstract

This research project is the first step in a program of research designed to explore the relationship between mindfulness and conceptual change. Using a pre- and posttest design, our research explored whether a mindfulness intervention combined with reading a refutation text could facilitate conceptual change with learning about genetically modified foods (GMFs). Kabbat-Zinn (2003) defines mindfulness as purposefully paying attention to the present moment without judgement. Previous research suggests that being in a mindful state is associated with high cognitive engagement, (Garland et al., 2009). We  used Dole and Sinatra’s (1998) Cognitive Reconstruction of Knowledge Model to explore conceptual change variables. We chose this mode of conceptual change because CRKM (1998) posits strong conceptual change is associated with high cognitive engagement. The problem we addressed is that no previous research has explored connections between mindfulness and conceptual change.