Effects of Mindfulness and Yoga on Preschool Students' Emotional Regulation, Behavior, and Social Participation
NCT Number: NCT06561373
Status: NOT_YET_RECRUITING
Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
Phases: NA
Conditions: Prosocial Behavior|Self Regulation|Impulsive Behavior
Interventions: BEHAVIORAL: Calm & Alert yoga and mindfulness
Sponsor: Elizabethtown College
Sex: ALL
Age: CHILD
Enrollment: 40
Study Design: Allocation: RANDOMIZED|Intervention Model: PARALLEL|Masking: SINGLE (OUTCOMES_ASSESSOR)|Primary Purpose: PREVENTION
Start Date: 2024-08-23
Completion Date: 2024-11-11
Locations: Elizabethtown College, Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, 17022, United States

Summary:
The goal of this clinical trial is to learn if mindfulness and yoga can improve attention, problem-solving, memory, emotional awareness, and impulsivity in preschoolers. The main questions it aims to answer are:

Can a 30-minute, once-a-week mindfulness and yoga program (Calm \& Alert) over seven weeks in preschool classrooms increase emotional regulation during the school day? Can a 30-minute, once-a-week mindfulness and yoga program decrease negative behavioral incidences during the school day? Can a 30-minute, once-a-week mindfulness and yoga program increase prosocial behaviors like caring, sharing, and perspective-taking during the school day? Researchers will compare the effects of students who participated in the mindfulness and yoga program to students in classrooms who did not receive the program. Student participants will be asked to complete a short self-regulation task test before and after the mindfulness program. Teachers will rate the students on their prosocial behavior before and after the mindfulness program and record negative behavioral incidents over the study period.

Primary Outcome Measures: Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire - Teacher Form (SDQ) is a widely used behavioral screening questionnaire that correlates highly with measures of behavior problems (Goodman \& Scott, 1999). The teacher form asks teachers to rate classroom students according to their perceived behavior. It consists of 25 items divided into five scales: emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity/inattention, peer relationship problems, and prosocial behavior. For this study, the prosocial behavior subscale will be primarily used for pre- and post-assessment data analysis. The teacher form asks teachers to rate classroom students according to their perceived behavior., Pre-intervention and post-intervention (within one week)|Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders Task, The Head-Toes-Knees-Shoulders (HTKS) Task is an ecologically valid method to measure behavioral aspects of self-regulation, such as controlling and directing actions, inhibitory control, paying attention, and recalling instructions (Ponitz, 2008; McClelland and Cameron, 2012). The test is introduced as a game with a gross motor component that more closely aligns with self-regulation behaviors required of children within natural contexts such as the classroom (McClelland and Cameron, 2012)., Pre-intervention and post-intervention (within one week for post and before the start of the study period for pretest)
Secondary Outcome Measures: Negative Behavior Incidents, School teachers will track behavioral incidents that fall outside the expected behavior realm for student participants., during the intervention period.