CONTEXT: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.

AIM:The aim was to evaluate the effects of Gayatri mantra (GM) chanting on attention as measured by digit-letter substitution task (DLST).

SETTINGS AND DESIGN:School setting and self as control study design.

MATERIALS AND 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.

STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: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.