Introduction

It is known that maternal anxiety during pregnancy can affect child outcomes. It was shown that mindfulness training during pregnancy can reduce the anxiety of mother. It can be assumed that low level of maternal anxiety during pregnancy can have positive effect on the child development. The goal of this study is to evaluate the effect of the maternal mindfulness training during pregnancy on executive abilities in 5–6 years old children.

Methods: In current study we included 22 women who participated in the maternal mindfulness training during pregnancy. The control group included 22 women who did not participate in this training during pregnancy. When the offspring of the target pregnancies were between 5 and 6 years of age, their executive abilities was assessed by 4 subtests from NEPSY (Tower, Auditory Attention and Response Set, Visual Attention, Statue).

Results: One-way ANOVA was used to reveal group differences in performing executive tasks. We have revealed the significant differences (p<.05) between groups in 3 subtests from NEPSY (Tower, Auditory Attention and Response Set, Visual Attention). The children from the experimental group had better results in these subtests.

Conclusion: The received results suggest that maternal mindfulness training during pregnancy may have positive effect on neurocognitive development of children, particularly on the development of specific executive abilities. We are going to investigate the long-term effect of maternal mindfulness training on the further neurocognitive development of children.