Studying Personalized Just-in-time Auditory Breathing Guides and Potential Safety Implications during Simulated Driving

© 2020 Owner/Author. Driving can occupy a considerable part of our daily lives and is often associated with high levels of stress. Motivated by the effectiveness of controlled breathing, this work studies the potential use of breathing interventions while driving to help manage stress. In particular...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Zepf, Sebastian, El Haouij, Neska, Lee, Jinmo, Ghandeharioun, Asma, Hernandez, Javier, Picard, Rosalind W.
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: ACM 2021
Online Access:https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/137017
Description
Summary:© 2020 Owner/Author. Driving can occupy a considerable part of our daily lives and is often associated with high levels of stress. Motivated by the effectiveness of controlled breathing, this work studies the potential use of breathing interventions while driving to help manage stress. In particular, we implemented and evaluated a closed-loop system that monitored the breathing rate of drivers in real-time and delivered either a conscious or an unconscious personalized acoustic breathing guide whenever needed. In a study with 24 participants, we observed that conscious interventions more effectively reduced the breathing rate but also increased the number of driving mistakes. We observed that prior driving experience as well as personality are significantly associated with the effect of the interventions, which highlights the importance of considering user profiles for in-car stress management interventions.