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Transcendental meditation and improved performance on intelligence-related measures: A longitudinal study
Personality and Individual Differences
Short Title: Transcendental meditation and improved performance on intelligence-related measures
Format: Journal Article
Publication Year: 1991
Pages: 1105-1116
Sources ID: 22373
Visibility: Private
Abstract: (Show)

This two-year longitudinal study investigated the effect of participation in a special university curriculum, whose principal innovative feature is twice-daily practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and TM-Sidhi program, on performance on Cattell's Culture Fair Intelligence Test (CFIT) and Hick's reaction time. These measures are known to be correlated with general intelligence. One hundred college men and women were the subjects—45 from Maharishi International University (MIU) and 55 from the University of Northern Iowa (UNI). The experimental group (MIU) improved significantly on the CFIT (t=2.79, P<0.005); choice reaction time (t=9.10, P<0.0001); SD of choice reaction time (t=11.39, P<0.0001), and simple reaction time (t=2.11, P<0.025) over two years compared to the control group, which showed no improvement. Possible confounds of subject's age, education level, level of interest in meditation, father's education level, and father's annual income were controlled for using analysis of covariance and stepwise regression. The results replicate the findings of previous longitudinal studies on intelligence test scores at MIU, and indicate that participation in the MIU curriculum results in improvements in measures related to general intelligence.

Subjects: 
Scientific Studies of Transcendental Meditation
Practices of Hindu Contemplation
Theories of Learning and Contemplation
Education and Contemplation
Contemplation by Applied Subject
Hindu Contemplation
Transcendental Meditation (TM)
Higher Education and Contemplation
Contemplation by Tradition