Background The physical and emotional well-being of women is critical for healthy pregnancy and birth outcomes. The Two Happy Hearts intervention is a personalized mind-body program coached by community health workers that includes monitoring and reflecting on personal health, as well as practicing stress management strategies such as mindful breathing and movement. Objective The aims of this study are to (1) test the daily use of a wearable device to objectively measure physical and emotional well-being along with subjective assessments during pregnancy, and (2) explore the user’s engagement with the Two Happy Hearts intervention prototype, as well as understand their experiences with various intervention components. Methods A case study with a mixed design was used. We recruited a 29-year-old woman at 33 weeks of gestation with a singleton pregnancy. She had no medical complications or physical restrictions, and she was enrolled in the Medi-Cal public health insurance plan. The participant engaged in the Two Happy Hearts intervention prototype from her third trimester until delivery. The Oura smart ring was used to continuously monitor objective physical and emotional states, such as resting heart rate, resting heart rate variability, sleep, and physical activity. In addition, the participant self-reported her physical and emotional health using the Two Happy Hearts mobile app–based 24-hour recall surveys (sleep quality and level of physical activity) and ecological momentary assessment (positive and negative emotions), as well as the Perceived Stress Scale, Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. Engagement with the Two Happy Hearts intervention was recorded via both the smart ring and phone app, and user experiences were collected via Research Electronic Data Capture satisfaction surveys. Objective data from the Oura ring and subjective data on physical and emotional health were described. Regression plots and Pearson correlations between the objective and subjective data were presented, and content analysis was performed for the qualitative data. Results Decreased resting heart rate was significantly correlated with increased heart rate variability (r=–0.92, P<.001). We found significant associations between self-reported responses and Oura ring measures: (1) positive emotions and heart rate variability (r=0.54, P<.001), (2) sleep quality and sleep score (r=0.52, P<.001), and (3) physical activity and step count (r=0.77, P<.001). In addition, deep sleep appeared to increase as light and rapid eye movement sleep decreased. The psychological measures of stress, depression, and anxiety appeared to decrease from baseline to post intervention. Furthermore, the participant had a high completion rate of the components of the Two Happy Hearts intervention prototype and shared several positive experiences, such as an increased self-efficacy and a normal delivery. Conclusions The Two Happy Hearts intervention prototype shows promise for potential use by underserved pregnant women.
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An Ecological Investigation of the Emotional Context Surrounding Nonsuicidal Self‐Injurious Thoughts and Behaviors in Adolescents and Young Adults
Ecological momentary assessment (
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10033064
- Publisher / Repository:
- Wiley-Blackwell
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior
- Volume:
- 48
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0363-0234
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 149-159
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Although parenting behavior and friendship quality predict adolescent externalizing behaviors (
EB s), individual differences in temperament may differentially affect susceptibility to these factors over time. In a multi‐method and multi‐informant study of 141 children followed prospectively from toddlerhood to adolescence, we tested the independent and interactive associations of age 3 reactive temperament (e.g., negative emotionality) and age 13 observed parenting (i.e., positive and negative behavior) and friendship (i.e., conflict and warmth), with multi‐informant ratings of age 15 aggression and rule‐breaking behavior. Negative parenting predicted growth in parent‐ratedEB , but only for adolescents with early reactive temperament. Temperament did not affect sensitivity to positive parenting or friendship. Results are discussed in the context of differential susceptibility theory and intervention implications for adolescents. -
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Background As mobile health (mHealth) studies become increasingly productive owing to the advancements in wearable and mobile sensor technology, our ability to monitor and model human behavior will be constrained by participant receptivity. Many health constructs are dependent on subjective responses, and without such responses, researchers are left with little to no ground truth to accompany our ever-growing biobehavioral data. This issue can significantly impact the quality of a study, particularly for populations known to exhibit lower compliance rates. To address this challenge, researchers have proposed innovative approaches that use machine learning (ML) and sensor data to modify the timing and delivery of surveys. However, an overarching concern is the potential introduction of biases or unintended influences on participants’ responses when implementing new survey delivery methods.
Objective This study aims to demonstrate the potential impact of an ML-based ecological momentary assessment (EMA) delivery system (using receptivity as the predictor variable) on the participants’ reported emotional state. We examine the factors that affect participants’ receptivity to EMAs in a 10-day wearable and EMA–based emotional state–sensing mHealth study. We study the physiological relationships indicative of receptivity and affect while also analyzing the interaction between the 2 constructs.
Methods We collected data from 45 healthy participants wearing 2 devices measuring electrodermal activity, accelerometer, electrocardiography, and skin temperature while answering 10 EMAs daily, containing questions about perceived mood. Owing to the nature of our constructs, we can only obtain ground truth measures for both affect and receptivity during responses. Therefore, we used unsupervised and supervised ML methods to infer affect when a participant did not respond. Our unsupervised method used k-means clustering to determine the relationship between physiology and receptivity and then inferred the emotional state during nonresponses. For the supervised learning method, we primarily used random forest and neural networks to predict the affect of unlabeled data points as well as receptivity.
Results Our findings showed that using a receptivity model to trigger EMAs decreased the reported negative affect by >3 points or 0.29 SDs in our self-reported affect measure, scored between 13 and 91. The findings also showed a bimodal distribution of our predicted affect during nonresponses. This indicates that this system initiates EMAs more commonly during states of higher positive emotions.
Conclusions Our results showed a clear relationship between affect and receptivity. This relationship can affect the efficacy of an mHealth study, particularly those that use an ML algorithm to trigger EMAs. Therefore, we propose that future work should focus on a smart trigger that promotes EMA receptivity without influencing affect during sampled time points.
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Abstract The goal of this study was to examine the relation between real-world socio-emotional measures and neural activation to parental criticism, a salient form of social threat for adolescents. This work could help us understand why heightened neural reactivity to social threat consistently emerges as a risk factor for internalizing psychopathology in youth. We predicted that youth with higher reactivity to parental criticism (vs neutral comments) in the subgenual anterior cingulate cortex (sgACC), amygdala and anterior insula would experience (i) less happiness in daily positive interpersonal situations and (ii) more sadness and anger in daily negative interpersonal situations. Participants (44 youth aged 11–16 years with a history of anxiety) completed a 10-day ecological momentary assessment protocol and a neuroimaging task in which they listened to audio clips of their parents’ criticism and neutral comments. Mixed-effects models tested associations between neural activation to critical (vs neutral) feedback and emotions in interpersonal situations. Youth who exhibited higher activation in the sgACC to parental criticism reported less happiness during daily positive interpersonal situations. No significant neural predictors of negative emotions (e.g. sadness and anger) emerged. These findings provide evidence of real-world correlates of neural reactivity to social threat that may have important clinical implications.
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null (Ed.)Despite significant vision loss, humans can still recognize various emotional stimuli via a sense of hearing and express diverse emotional responses, which can be sorted into two dimensions, arousal and valence. Yet, many research studies have been focusing on sighted people, leading to lack of knowledge about emotion perception mechanisms of people with visual impairment. This study aims at advancing knowledge of the degree to which people with visual impairment perceive various emotions – high/low arousal and positive/negative emotions. A total of 30 individuals with visual impairment participated in interviews where they listened to stories of people who became visually impaired, encountered and overcame various challenges, and they were instructed to share their emotions. Participants perceived different kinds and intensities of emotions, depending on their demographic variables such as living alone, loneliness, onset of visual impairment, visual acuity, race/ethnicity, and employment status. The advanced knowledge of emotion perceptions in people with visual impairment is anticipated to contribute toward better designing social supports that can adequately accommodate those with visual impairment.more » « less
