Abstract
We assessed the calming effect of doppel, a wearable device that delivers heartbeat-like tactile stimulation on the wrist. We tested whether the use of doppel would have a calming effect on physiological arousal and subjective reports of state anxiety during the anticipation of public speech, a validated experimental task that is known to induce anxiety. Two groups of participants were tested in a single-blind design. Both groups wore the device on their wrist during the anticipation of public speech, and were given the cover story that the device was measuring blood pressure. For only one group, the device was turned on and delivered a slow heartbeat-like vibration. Participants in the doppel active condition displayed lower increases in skin conductance responses relative to baseline and reported lower anxiety levels compared to the control group. Therefore, the presence, as opposed to its absence, of a slow rhythm, which in the present study was instantiated as an auxiliary slow heartbeat delivered through doppel, had a significant calming effect on physiological arousal and subjective experience during a socially stressful situation. This finding is discussed in relation to past research on responses and entrainment to rhythms, and their effects on arousal and mood.
Highlights
Wearable devices are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, serving a range of functions, from measuring physical activity and a range of physiological variables to providing feedback on emotional states
The analysis of NS-SCRs levels revealed a significant main effect of Time (F(1, 50) = 36.69, p < 0.001, ƞ2 = 0.42) confirming, as expected, that speech anticipation resulted in an overall increase in physiological arousal, providing a proof that the task was successful in eliciting arousal
We tested the efficacy of a new wearable device on calmness using a task that typically induces high anxiety, namely, the preparation and anticipation of giving a short public speech to an unfamiliar audience. doppel gives an on-demand, discrete, user-controlled, heartbeat-like vibration applied through a wristband and it aims at modulating the alertness or calmness of the user by adjusting the frequency of the “tactile heartbeat”
Summary
Wearable devices are becoming ubiquitous in everyday life, serving a range of functions, from measuring physical activity and a range of physiological variables to providing feedback on emotional states. Based on the aforementioned lines of research about the importance of heartbeats as pervasive physiological signals involved in emotional regulation and social interactions, and the effects of slow rhythms on mood, doppel was designed to embed on the users’ body, the ubiquitous biological rhythm of a beating heart as a means of using the felt faster or slower rhythm to modulate levels of arousal and calmness. Given the significance of interoception in cognitive-affective processing[20,21,22], potential changes in interoceptive signals (i.e. signals originating from visceral organs such as the heart) in stressful, negative and affective situations may influence emotional experience, emotion regulation and decision making in these contexts In such situations, the ability to regulate one’s physiological arousal and emotions may be important for lowering anxiety and for successful performance
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