Accepted for/Published in: JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Date Submitted: Feb 14, 2019
Date Accepted: Jun 29, 2019
“Breathing-Mentor”: A pilot study with a biofeedback app to instruct abdominal breathing
ABSTRACT
Background:
Deep and slow abdominal breathing is an important skill for the management of stress and pain. Despite multiple proofs on the effectiveness of biofeedback, most breathing apps are, however, limited to pacing specific breathing patterns, without sensor feedback on the actual breathing behavior.
Objective:
To fill this gap, “Breathing-Mentor” was developed which combines an effective visualization of the instruction with biofeedback on deep abdominal breathing, based on the smartphone’s accelerometers. The goal of this pilot study was to investigate user’s feedback and breathing behavior during initial contact with the app.
Methods:
To reveal possible effects of the biofeedback, two versions of the mobile app were realized. Both contained the same visual instruction, but only the full version included additional biofeedback. Forty untrained participants were randomly assigned to one of the two versions of the app. They had to follow the app instructions as closely as possible for five minutes.
Results:
The group with additional biofeedback showed an increased signal to noise ratio for the instructed breathing frequency (0.1 Hz) compared to the visual instruction without biofeedback (F(1,37) = 4.18, P = .048). During this initial contact with the full version, self-reported relaxation effectivity was, however, decreased compared to visual instruction without biofeedback (t(37) = -2.36, P = .024), probably due to increased cognitive workload to follow the instruction.
Conclusions:
The study underpins the feasibility and usefulness of biofeedback in Breathing-Mentor to train abdominal breathing. Immediate effects on relaxation levels should, however, not be expected for untrained users.
Citation
