Children’s metacognition and mindful awareness of breathing and thinking

• Children’s awareness of their own breathing and thinking was measured.
• Children’s objective process knowledge about breathing and thinking was measured.
• Developmental progression was found for breath but not thought self-awareness.
• Knowledge about both processes is inter-correlated but unrelated to monitoring.
• Focusing on breath may facilitate thought awareness.

Children ages 4, 6, and 8-years old were tested for their introspective capacity to mindfully attend to the natural flow of their breath and thought as well as their objective knowledge of breathing and thinking as continuous, necessary bio-psychological processes. Results showed consistent developmental progression in breath awareness as well as process knowledge about both breathing and thinking. Distinctly, there was no improvement in thought awareness with age, which remained consistently poor. However, children who received the breath awareness task first performed better on the thought awareness task, suggesting that breath awareness may facilitate thought awareness. Process knowledge about breathing and thinking was significantly inter-correlated, but such knowledge was not significantly related to awareness abilities when controlling for age. The study points to the need for more systematic applied research examining development of mindfulness practices and metacognitive knowledge.