Exams can cause a racing heart or sweaty palms for the best of us, but a simple smartwatch app could help alleviate some of the stress. The app produces a slow, soothing tapping that seems to help people perform better in situations filled with anxiety.
Jean Costa and his colleagues at Cornell University in New York created an app that reacts to people鈥檚 heart rates by producing a light tapping on the inner wrist of a smartwatch wearer. They tested the app, called BoostMeUp, on 72 college students who were given two maths exams under pressure, and found that slow taps reduced anxiety and improved test performance.
Previous studies suggest that techniques such as mindfulness and meditation can reduce stress. 鈥淏ut in many situations we need something in the moment,鈥� says Costa.
Advertisement
During a practice maths test, the team first used smartwatches without tapping to measure the students鈥� baseline heart rates. In subsequent tests, half the participants were given a wrist tapping that was 30 per cent faster than their baseline heart rate, while the other half experienced tapping that was 30 per cent slower than this baseline.
To raise the stakes, participants were told the exams were IQ tests and that they would be rewarded financially for better performance.
After all the tests, participants filled out questionnaires to assess their levels of anxiety.
Those who were given artificially fast heart rate feedback reported higher levels of anxiety compared with the slow feedback group.
The fast tapping group also did worse on the test of 36 questions, answering 0.58 more questions incorrectly on average compared with when they had no feedback. The slow feedback group answered 1.75 more questions correctly when the tapping was on.
Karin Petrini at the University of Bath, UK, says that although the possibility of improving cognitive performance with simple tactile feedback is exciting, she isn鈥檛 convinced that the results are conclusive.
There was only a small reduction in anxiety for the slow tapping group, but a greater improvement in cognitive performance. This calls into question whether the improvement in test performance was actually linked to changes in anxiety levels, says Petrini. 鈥淚t is difficult to assume that an effect could be found in a real setting where a lot more variables are at play,鈥� she adds.
Costa says the app may be hard for students to use in real exam situations, where technology such as mobile phones and smartwatches are banned. But he says it could be useful outside of exams, during a job interview or while public speaking, for example. 鈥淚n the real world, we may need higher levels of personalisation,鈥� says Costa.
Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies
