Paired-associate Learning and Recall: a Pilot Study of the Transcendental Meditation Program

The purpose of this preliminary study was to examine the effects of the Transcendental Meditation program on learning ability and retention (acquisition and recall). The experiment was composed of three sessions of paired-associate anticipation learning and recall, each spaced one week apart. Ten subjects who were experienced with the Transcendental Meditation technique (mean experience = 28 months, S.D. = 13.6 months), six subjects who had recently begun Transcendental Meditation (less than three months experience), and 12 nonmeditating controls participated in the first session. Twenty of these subjects took part in the second session, and 14 subjects returned for the third session. During Session I all subjects were presented with two paired-associate lists to learn to 100 percent criterion: a high-similarity (difficult) list and a low-similarity (easy) list. During Session II all the subjects were given an intermediate-similarity paired-associate list to learn to criterion. Each subject was then randomly assigned to one of three 25-minute intertrial conditions-rest, Transcendental Meditation, or serial learning. After the 25-minute interval, the subjects were reassembled and tested for retention of the paired-associate list and were then given two more trials to try to re-establish criterion knowledge. In Session III returning subjects were tested for recall of the paired-associate list learned during Session II.