Adrien Chopin¹ (), Lia Antico², Marie Angelillo³, Maeva Briguet³, Orane Schaefer³, Daphne Bavelier³; ¹Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, San Francisco, California, USA, ²Mindfulness Center, School of Public Health, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, USA, ³Faculty of Psychology and Educational Science, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland

Introduction: Several meta-analyses have shown that mindfulness meditation enhances various cognitive aspects, but the mechanisms underlying these effects and their specific impact on learning abilities remain unclear. This study aims to explore the relationship between mindfulness meditation and learning abilities, as learning may be a key mechanism through which cognition enhancements occur in a generalized manner. Methods: Using a cross-sectional design, we compared regular meditators and non-meditators in two learning tasks, one tapping audio-visual working memory and the other visual perception. Pre-existing performance differences were assessed through initial performance scores, while learning speed was measured by the rate of performance change across task repetitions. Participants were matched for age, sex at birth and videogaming proficiency. Additionally, we examine the effect of potential covariates such as sport, music practice and expectations, comparing several generalized linear mixed-effect models. Results: Regular meditators outperformed non-meditators in initial working memory performance, consistent with prior research; yet, they did not show faster learning. In the visual orientation discrimination task, initial performance was seen again to differ but here meditation interacted with music practice. Meditators with lower levels of music practice outperformed non-meditators, while those with higher levels of music practice started with lower performance. Interestingly, although meditators did not learn faster overall, exploratory analysis revealed greater learning gains in meditators, as measured by the difference between final and initial performance. Finally, neither performance nor learning variables were influenced by expectations. Conclusion: Mindfulness meditation facilitated initial task performance, albeit conditioned on music expertise for our perceptual task. In contrast, mindfulness meditation did not change learning speed in either task; yet, it may result in greater perceptual learning gain, although replication is needed. Further research is also required to explore the mechanisms underlying the effects of mindfulness meditation on perception, in particular its interactions with music practice.