Effects of a Mindfulness Meditation App on Subjective Well-Being in Undergraduate University Students

Mindfulness training in the study was performed using a new app called Wildflowers. With this app participants were able to choose and complete a variety of guided meditations over the 3 week training period. Wildflowers includes guided meditations such as breathing, body scans, and open monitoring practices and also provides didactic content in the form of lessons and information about the benefits of mindfulness training.

The training app for the control condition was based on an open source code for a popular cognitive training app called 2048 that is marketed as a fun and relaxing puzzle game. Within 2048, participants slide numbered tiles around a grid, matching tiles of the same value. Instead of tiles disappearing, as in Candy Crush or other similar grid-sliding games, matching 2 numbered tiles in 2048 combines them into 1 new tile displaying the sum of the previous 2 numbers. For example, two 2-tiles linked side-by-side become a 4-tile, whereas 2 matched 4-tiles become an 8-tile, and so on. The goal is to match tiles until the sum of 2048 is reached on a single tile. There is no time limit.