Breathing Based Relaxation Tools in an Ambulatory Setting
Abstract
Due to the increase in work-place stress and stress-related ailments, various treatments have been developed in the last decade to help people train relaxation skills (Stein 2001). Among them, deep breathing has been shown to be effective in helping users relax. In this study, we aim to investigate two modalities of breathing assistance: biofeedback and pacing signals. We study the transfer of deep breathing relaxation skills to a stressful task, their efficiency in assisting the users to lower their breathing rate, and usage statistics. We also aimed to study the effect of including a casual game with the treatment modality on these factors. To this end, we implemented four relaxation interventions, namely, visual biofeedback (VBF), pacing (PACE), game biofeedback (GBF), and game with pacing (GPACE).
First, we conducted a controlled study in a laboratory setting to study the transfer of relaxation skills to a stressful task immediately after the treatment. Our results showed that all the four treatment interventions were able to help the participants lower their breathing rates compared to a control group (casual game only); however, only the GBF group showed a statistically significant reduction compared to the control group. Further, the biofeedback groups (VBF, GBF) aided the participants to maintain their breathing rate lower than the pacing groups (PACE, GPACE) during the treatment. The effect of game inclusion on skill transfer is still inconclusive, due to ambiguity caused as a result of the higher variance in the average breathing rate during the post-treatment stressful task using the non-game groups (VBF, PACE) than the game groups (GBF, GPACE).
Then, we performed experiments in which the participants included the intervention into their routine and performed them in a real-world setting. We found that the usage of the GBF intervention was significantly higher than the VBF intervention. However, no significant difference in the usage was found between the other interventions. And, participants found the game interventions significantly more enjoyable than the non-game interventions supporting the choice of including a game with treatment modality to minimize attrition. Further, we observed that a higher amount of training is needed for the game groups than then non-game groups. Using the GBF intervention, if the user is trained well to control their breathing rate, it is more likely that they control their breathing rate during the treatment sessions as well, whereas the participants in the other treatments did not show the same. Finally, this study failed to show differences in skill transfer between groups due to a few drawbacks in the design of the protocol.
Results from our studies are still inconclusive; however, they indicate that all the four treatments are beneficial in assisting participants to relax. Game biofeedback seems to be marginally better than the other interventions in terms of skill transfer; however, more data is needed to reach a definitive conclusion. Our studies showed a few drawbacks in the design of the experiments that need to be addressed in future studies to provide conclusive results and definitive comparison between the interventions.
Citation
Gummidela, Venkata Nitin Chakravarthy (2020). Breathing Based Relaxation Tools in an Ambulatory Setting. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /192973.