ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to determine whether children could be trained in the practice of meditation and to examine the effects that such training might have on selected aspects of their cognitive and affective functioning. E. W. Maupin has suggested that Zen training procedures are analogous in some respects to Western insight-oriented psychotherapy. Meditation practice may be expected to enhance field independence, as measured by the Children's Embedded Figures Test (CEFT). The CEFT was used to measure level of field independence. T. V. Lesh found that counseling psychology students who practiced meditation significantly increased their empathie ability and their openness to experience. Meditation practice may be expected to decrease test anxiety, as measured by the Test Anxiety Scale for Children. An alternative explanation is that meditation is a skill that requires practice over a long period of time, and only after a certain level of adeptness has been attained, fairly consistently, do the effects of the practice ramify.
