身心互動途徑初探：以「身心中軸覺察訓練」對身體感覺、工作記憶與注意力控制功能的提升效果為例

Abstract

在正念相關訓練的研究中，身體覺察的重要性總是不斷地被強調，但是身體到底在這個部分扮演怎樣的角色仍是未知。在本論文中，此議題將會從三個面向來檢驗：第一，是否孩童的身體覺察能力會和執行控制功能有關；第二，是否訓練可以同時提升孩童的身（身體感覺）與心（認知功能）；第三，是否孩童原本的身體感覺條件會影響訓練的成效。我利用我們實驗室所發展的兒童版的身心中軸覺察課程（Body-Mind Axial Awareness for Children, BMAA-C），來檢驗這些問題。58位小孩（平均年齡9.52歲，男性51.7%）參與了身心相關性研究（前測），而48位小孩進一步參與了訓練效果研究，他們被分配至訓練組—BMAA組（27位，平均年齡：9.59歲，男性51.9%，女性48.1%）以及參加一般與正念無關營隊的對照組（21位，平均年齡: 9.38歲，男性47.6%，女性52.4%）。參與學童在訓練期前後兩週的時間內個別接受了本體覺的被動動作測驗、內感覺的心跳偵測作業、持續性注意力反應作業以及工作記憶的操作廣度作業。在前測的資料中發現學童的本體覺覺察度表現越好，他們的持續性注意力的表現也就越好（較低的RTCV以及較高的NOGO accuracy），而工作記憶跟身體覺察度無關。此外，BMAA-C課程較對照組更能提升孩童的工作記憶還有持續性注意力（較低的RTCV）。此外，在前測中，本體覺精準度高於中位數與本體覺覺察度低於中位數的孩童相較於各自另一半的學童在持續性注意力的另一個指標（NOGO accuracy）更能受惠於訓練，後續分析更發現在前測本體覺覺察度低於中位數的孩童，其本體覺覺察度的提升跟NOGO accuracy的提升有關聯性。這些結果首度提供BMAA訓練有助於孩童提升認知功能的證據，同時也發現了身體覺察的重要性，也對於身心互動的關係提供一個初步的資料。

Recently, there is growing evidence that mindfulness trainings benefit children’s cognition, during which the body awareness is emphasized. However, how body awareness influences the mind via mindfulness trainings is still unknown. In this thesis, I aimed to examine this issue from three aspects. First, whether children’s body awareness correlates to their executive functions; Second, whether the training benefits children’s executive functions and body awareness at the same time; Third, whether children’s initial states of their bodily senses would modulate the training effects of Body-Mind Axial Awareness practices for children (BMAA-C), a kind of movement-based contemplative practices (MBCPs) that emphasizes the body-mind integration much, on executive functions. Fifty-eight children (mean age = 9.52; boy: 51.7%, girl: 48.3%) were recruited for the correlational study and forty-eight of them were then participated the training effect study. They were assigned to either the BMAA group (N = 27; mean age = 9.59 years old) or the control group (N = 21; mean age = 9.38 years old). All the children completed tasks for proprioception, interoception, sustained attention and working memory capacity before (T1) and after (T2) the camp. With the T1 scores, I found that children’s performance on proprioceptive awareness significantly correlated to their sustained attention, which was further moderated by interoceptive awareness. However, working memory did not correlate with bodily awareness. After training, the BMAA group improved more than the control group on the scores of working memory capacities and RTCV, an index of sustained attention. Furthermore, within the BMAA group, the training benefits children with better proprioceptive accuracy at T1 more on sustained attention, indicated by higher NOGO ACC, after training than those had poorer proprioceptive accuracy. Children with poorer proprioceptive awareness at T1 also improved more on NOGO ACC than those who had better proprioceptive awareness and further analysis showed that there is a contingency between the improvement on proprioceptive awareness and that on NOGO ACC in the children with poorer proprioceptive awareness at T1. These findings provide an evidence of the effectiveness of the BMAA-C practice for children on cognitive functions and partially support the importance of bodily awareness to executive or attentional control for children.