Presenter(s): Ray Jackson—Psychology
Faculty Mentor(s): Dasa Zeithamova-Demircan, Lea Frank
Session 6: Cerebal Matters
Research with Virtual Reality has shown that a brief meditation experience is effective in reducing feelings of stress and anxiety (Keller, Bunnell, Kim & Rothbaum 2017) . When combined with interactive biometric feedback (for example: one’s heart rate) these same interventions have a stronger effect on both subjective feeling states as well as physiological changes associated with a relaxation response (Jester, Rozek, & McKelley 2019) . While it has been previously shown that reductions in stress can facilitate improved performance on cognitive tasks (Wu & Yan 2019), no research to date has specifically examined the ability of a brief Augmented Reality based meditation experience to boost cognitive performance . Our aim was to investigate if an AR-based meditation experience can stimulate a temporary boost in cognition by way of lowering stress, and to examine any additional effects of an addition of biometric feedback .