title: Comparison of effect of Gayatri Mantra and Poem Chanting on Digit Letter Substitution Task.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Attention is one of the components to enhance academic excellence. Traditional techniques were included in Indian schools to develop mental faculties with a view to add value to the latter.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The aim was to evaluate the effects of Gayatri mantra (GM) chanting on attention as measured by digit-letter substitution task (DLST).
  
  
  METHODS
  School setting and self as control study design.
  
  
  METHODS
  Subjects consisted of 60 school students included (boys = 30 and girls = 30) in the age range of 12-14 years, who were trained for chanting GM for 5 days. They were assessed on DLST immediately before and after two sessions (i) GM chanting (10 min) and (ii) Poem line (PL) chanting with an equal duration (10 min). Fifty percent of participants performed GM chanting and remaining on the PL recitation on day 6. The orders of the sessions were reversed on day 7.
  
  
  METHODS
  Repeated measure analysis of variance with Bonferroni adjustment used.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Both sessions showed significant improvement in the total and net score of DLST. The magnitude of net score improvement was greater after GM (21.67%) compared to PL (4.85%). Female group had found better performance following GM compared to PL chanting.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Both GM and PL led to improvement in performance, as assessed by DLST. But the influence of GM had significantly higher than PL in net score of female group.
authors.affiliation: Division of Humanities and Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anushandhana Samsthana, Bangalore, Karnataka, India.
authors.forename: Balaram
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Pradhan
authors.forename: Seema Godse
authors.initials: SG
authors.lastname: Derle
keywords: Attention; Gayatri mantra; mantra; recitation