Sonic Cradle

Sonic Cradle is an inter­ac­tive system designed to encour­age a med­i­ta­tive atten­tional pat­tern akin to mind­ful­ness. Users are com­fort­ably sus­pended in a dark cham­ber where they use res­pi­ra­tion as a means to focus and con­trol an immer­sive sound­scape. Basic inter­pre­tive qual­i­ta­tive meth­ods along with three quan­ti­ta­tive scales, Affect Grid, Toronto Mindfulness Scale, and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, that assess mood, mind­ful­ness, and anx­i­ety, respec­tively, were used to ana­lyze data of 30 par­tic­i­pants after 15-minute ses­sions of both Sonic Cradle and self-guided relax­ation. This talk is part of a larger study and will only dis­cuss the Toronto Mindfulness Scale. Results sug­gest that Sonic Cradle may help to induce a mindfulness-like state and offers a unique expe­ri­ence com­pared to simply trying to relax in a dark room with­out any assis­tance. With mount­ing evi­dence imply­ing mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion as an effec­tive prac­tice for self-regulation, our results are promis­ing that Sonic Cradle can be an effec­tive tool in cul­ti­vat­ing and increas­ing psy­cho­log­i­cal well-being. Moreover, Sonic Cradle can be instru­men­tal in intro­duc­ing mind­ful­ness to non-meditators or those who are unable to learn mind­ful­ness through more tra­di­tional means.

I presented my paper on “Sonic Cradle: Investigating Meditative Aspects of an Interactive Technology” at the 2014 GRAND con­fer­ence in Ottawa (Kitson, Riecke, Vidyarthi, 2014).