The following article by ScienceDaily reported on a paper in Psychological Science (Mrazek et al., 2013), claiming that mindfulness training led to improved working memory and GRE scores. These studies always pique my interest, but there is always some hole in it that makes me think "Waait a minute!"

In the case of the present study, my concern is that participants in the experimental condition were required to practice mindfulness in their daily lives, while those in the control nutrition condition were not required to alter their diet. The concern is whether the improvement came from practicing mindfulness, or from practicing something, but this is not my area, and it could be that prior research has already accounted for that somehow. Usually I would leave it at that, but this seems well suited for my first CSci.SE question.

My full question is thus: What is the state of the field regarding the effect of practicing meditation on cognition, over and above other forms of practice?

References

Mrazek, M. D., Franklin, M. S., Phillips, D. T., Baird, B., & Schooler, J. W. (2013). Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering. Psychological Science. doi:10.1177/0956797612459659