Playing with and without Biofeedback Studying the short-term physiological and cognitive effects of playing a respiratory biofeedback enhanced game to combat stress

摘要

Casual mobile games enhanced with biofeedback provide a more engaging alternative to traditional stress self-regulation therapies. Previous studies have shown to help players acquire breathing control skills that carry-over into a subsequent cognitively stressful task. We replicated these results with higher power (42 users), and with a more challenging game. We used a Pac-Man style game enhanced with Respiratory Biofeedback, Pac-Man Zen, to compare 1) breathing control during play, 2) the carry-over of said control into a subsequent stressful task and 3) cognitive improvement in a subsequent stressful task against a non-biofeedback version of the game. Results showed that onetime training with the biofeedback version of the game was not only more effective, but also led to improved performance in a later stressful task, both in terms of lowered breathing and improved test scores, compared to the non-biofeedback version. The result is important because it suggests that stimulating, casual biofeedback games can be effective at teaching breathing control, and thus arousal regulation, in a stressful setting.