The Impact of a Technology-Assisted, Two-Month Breathing Exercise Intervention on Daily Affect, Weekly Stress and Examinational Stress

Figures

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  Figure 1. Daily Arousal levels and their evolution over time throughout the intervention period in the three experimental conditions. Shaded areas represent ± SEM. The lower graph (N) represents the number of participants who filled in the EMA survey on any given day.

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  Figure 2. Daily Valence levels and their evolution over time throughout the intervention period in the three experimental conditions. Shaded areas represent ± SEM. The lower graph (N) represents the number of participants who filled in the EMA survey on any given day.

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  Figure 3. Weekly Stress levels and their evolution over time throughout the intervention period in the three experimental conditions. Shaded areas represent ± SEM. The lower graph (N) represents the number of participants who filled in the EMA survey on any given week.

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  Figure 4. Examinational Stress levels in the three experimental conditions. Error bars represent ± SEM.

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  Figure 5. Predicted relation between Arousal on day t−1 and day t based on Model 2c (Table 2), visualizing the three-way interaction between Arousalt−1, Adherence, and User Experience in the app + haptic feedback group (Moonbird™). Each panel shows the simple slope of Arousalt−1 on Arousalt separately for days when the breathing exercise was performed versus not performed, and for participants with high versus low User Experience (split at the within-group median). Shaded areas are 95% CIs. A steeper negative slope for the adherence = yes/high user experience combination indicates that breathing exercise practice attenuated the carry-over of elevated arousal from one day to the next.

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  Figure 6. Predicted relation between Valence on day t−1 and day t based on Model 3b and Model 4b (Table 3), visualizing the two-way interaction between Valencet−1 and Adherence separately for the app-assisted (Breathe™) and app + haptic feedback (Moonbird™) groups. Each panel shows the simple slope of Valencet−1 on Valencet for days when the breathing exercise was performed versus not performed. Shaded areas are 95% CIs. A steeper positive slope for the adherence = yes condition indicates that breathing exercise practice strengthened the carry-over of positive valence from one day to the next.

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  Figure 7. Predicted relation between average Weekly Stress throughout the semester and Examinational Stress based on Model 7c (Table 5) for the app-assisted group (Breathe™), visualizing the three-way interaction between WeeklyStressTotal, AdherenceTotal, and User Experience. Each panel shows the simple slope of WeeklyStressTotal on Examinational Stress separately for high versus low total adherence and high versus low User Experience (both split at the within-group median). Shaded areas are 95% CIs. The pattern indicates that higher weekly stress predicted greater examinational stress only among participants with low adherence or poor user experience; among highly adherent participants with positive user experience, this relationship was substantially attenuated.