Brief Overview of Study:
Imagine feeling intense stress: palms sweaty, heart racing, breathing shallow. Sensations of the body often come to the forefront when describing experiences of emotion or stress, yet these physiological changes are separate from the subjective ‘feeling’ of these states that we experience mentally. This study focused on the relationship between physiological and mental states during stress.
This study was conducted at the University of Wisconsin - Madison from 2019-2023, led by Sasha Sommerfeldt as part of her doctoral dissertation (which you can review for more details on methods: https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/EVOCDWJXBT2JU8L), and assisted by around 50 amazing students over the years. It builds on earlier work with data from the Mid-Life in the United States Study (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0956797619849555; midus.wisc.edu).
Additional information and study materials available on the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/r2wmv/wiki/home/
Participants
Participants were recruited from Madison, Wisconsin and surrounding communities. N = 120 people participated in the study, of whom 78.3% (N = 94) completed post-test measures (N = 4 were only online questionnaires due to pandemic restrictions; N = 90 returned in-person). Participants ranged in age from 18-65 years old, with a mean age of 34.5 years (SD = 13.5 years). 78% of participants identified as White, 11% as Asian, 4% as Multiracial, 1% as American Indian or Alaska Native, 1% as Black or African American. 70% of participants identified as Women, 4% as Nonbinary, and 25% as Men.
Procedure
Participants completed two study visits separated by four weeks. Each study visit involved surveys (approximately 1 hour); a neutral faces task before the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST; 5 minutes); the TSST, including 3 modalities of physiological recordings (respiration, electrocardiogram, and electrodermal activity; approximately 35 minutes); a neutral faces task after the TSST (5 minutes); and a method of constant stimuli task to measure heartbeat interoception (approximately 30 minutes). Participants completed all study measures at both timepoints except for some minor differences in surveys.
At the end of the first study visit, participants were randomly assigned to a brief mindfulness training or a control group that recorded screen time. For the mindfulness training group, training involved listening to brief audio recordings that consisted of psychoeducation and guided mindfulness practices. Control participants were tasked with recording on a paper log how much time they spent on their smartphone each day for the 4-week treatment period as a sort of sham intervention, but which could also reduce time spent on the phone through monitoring, and be tied to wellbeing.
Table of Contents
- Data Processing
- Physiology: https://github.com/sashasomms/scim/tree/89484a79de9a2c41c549a982d162e455a5895bbc/physio
- Behavioral data from tasks: coming soon!
- Self-report surveys: coming soon!
- Behavioral Tasks (psychopy task scripts for data collection)
- Method of Constant Stimulus Interoception: https://github.com/sashasomms/scim/tree/89484a79de9a2c41c549a982d162e455a5895bbc/interoception
- Neutral Faces: coming soon!
- Analysis: coming soon!