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Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Memory and selective attention are important skills for academic and professional performance. Techniques to improve these skills are not taught either in education or company training courses. Any system which can systematically improve these skills will be of value in schools, uni...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Pradhan, Balaram, Nagendra, H R
Formato: Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Medknow Publications 2009
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3017965/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21234213
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.43293
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author Pradhan, Balaram
Nagendra, H R
author_facet Pradhan, Balaram
Nagendra, H R
author_sort Pradhan, Balaram
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND/AIMS: Memory and selective attention are important skills for academic and professional performance. Techniques to improve these skills are not taught either in education or company training courses. Any system which can systematically improve these skills will be of value in schools, universities, and workplaces. Aims:To investigate possible improvements in memory and selective attention, as measured by the Digit–Letter Substitution Task (DLST), due to practice of Cyclic Meditation (CM), a yoga relaxation technique, as compared to Supine Rest (SR). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Subjects consisted of 253 school students, 156 boys, 97 girls, in the age range 13–16 years, who were attending a 10-day yoga training course during summer vacation. The selected subjects had English as their medium of instruction in school and they acted as their own controls. They were allocated to two groups, and tested on the DLST, immediately before and after 22.5 minutes practice of CM on one day, and immediately before and after an equal period of SR on the other day. The first group performed CM on day 9 and SR on day 10. For the second group, the order was reversed. RESULTS: Within each group pre-post test differences were significant for both the relaxation techniques. The magnitude of net score improvement was greater after SR (7.85%) compared to CM (3.95%). Significance levels were P < 0.4 × 10(-9)for SR and P < 0.1 × 10(-3) for CM. The number of wrong attempts also increased significantly on both interventions, even after removing two outlier data points on day 1 in the SR group. CONCLUSIONS: Both CM and SR lead to improvement in performance on the DLST. However, these relaxation techniques lead to more wrong cancellation errors.
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spelling pubmed-30179652011-01-13 Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers Pradhan, Balaram Nagendra, H R Int J Yoga Original Article BACKGROUND/AIMS: Memory and selective attention are important skills for academic and professional performance. Techniques to improve these skills are not taught either in education or company training courses. Any system which can systematically improve these skills will be of value in schools, universities, and workplaces. Aims:To investigate possible improvements in memory and selective attention, as measured by the Digit–Letter Substitution Task (DLST), due to practice of Cyclic Meditation (CM), a yoga relaxation technique, as compared to Supine Rest (SR). MATERIALS AND METHODS: Subjects consisted of 253 school students, 156 boys, 97 girls, in the age range 13–16 years, who were attending a 10-day yoga training course during summer vacation. The selected subjects had English as their medium of instruction in school and they acted as their own controls. They were allocated to two groups, and tested on the DLST, immediately before and after 22.5 minutes practice of CM on one day, and immediately before and after an equal period of SR on the other day. The first group performed CM on day 9 and SR on day 10. For the second group, the order was reversed. RESULTS: Within each group pre-post test differences were significant for both the relaxation techniques. The magnitude of net score improvement was greater after SR (7.85%) compared to CM (3.95%). Significance levels were P < 0.4 × 10(-9)for SR and P < 0.1 × 10(-3) for CM. The number of wrong attempts also increased significantly on both interventions, even after removing two outlier data points on day 1 in the SR group. CONCLUSIONS: Both CM and SR lead to improvement in performance on the DLST. However, these relaxation techniques lead to more wrong cancellation errors. Medknow Publications 2009 /pmc/articles/PMC3017965/ /pubmed/21234213 http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.43293 Text en © International Journal of Yoga http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Original Article
Pradhan, Balaram
Nagendra, H R
Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers
title Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers
title_full Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers
title_fullStr Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers
title_full_unstemmed Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers
title_short Effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers
title_sort effect of yoga relaxation techniques on performance of digit–letter substitution task by teenagers
topic Original Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3017965/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21234213
http://dx.doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.43293
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