Memory, mindfulness, and perfectionism: Is there a relationship between memory and perfectionism, and can mindfulness reduce false alarms?

Memory has been found to improve with experience of mindfulness training. However, it has also been found to be impaired after mindfulness training. These mixed results are interesting and warrant further investigation into the relationship between memory and mindfulness. Additionally, perfectionism has been seen to play a role in task performance, making its role in memory task performance of interest to the current study. Perfectionism has been framed in a two-dimensional view, dividing it into two types. Perfectionistic concerns occurs when an individual is preoccupied with worry and concern over their performance, and perfectionistic striving occurs when an individual sets high goals for themself without stress and negative affect. The current study was interested in further investigating the effects of memory and mindfulness, as well as investigating the relationship between perfectionism and memory performance. Participants were randomly assigned to take part in a guided mindfulness practice after studying a word list and prior to being tested in a recognition task. Results of our study indicated no significant differences of mindfulness on memory task performance, or perfectionism on memory task performance. However, we do see the trend of the data in the direction of the hypotheses as well as an observed memory effect for a conjunction error task. We suggest that a limitation of our study may be a smaller sample size, which could perhaps be increased in a subsequent study to provide sufficient power