Sonic respiration

Abstract

We present an auditory biofeedback technique that may be used as a tool for stress management. The technique encourages slow breathing by adjusting the quality of a music recording in proportion to the user's respiration rate. We propose two forms of acoustic degradation, one that adds white noise to the recording if the user's breathing deviates from the target rate, and another that reduces the number of channels in a multi-track recording. Validation on a small user study indicates that both techniques are equally effective at reducing respiration rates while performing a secondary task, though user feedback indicates that additive noise is a more intuitive form of sonification.