Video Game With Biofeedback Helps Kids and Teens Regulate Stress and Anger

A video game with biofeedback — aimed at keeping heart rate low during fast-paced play — can help youth learn to regulate their anger, finds a small randomized trial at Boston Children’s Hospital.

The game, called Regulate and Gain Emotional Control (RAGE-Control), was developed at Boston Children’s about a decade ago. It trains kids to stay calm during stressful or frustrating situations. In the game, players try to shoot virtual asteroids while avoiding friendly craft, while a pulse oximeter on their wrist monitors their heart rate. If they remain calm and keep their heart rate down, they do better in the game. If their heart rate goes too high, they lose their ability to shoot.

 Techniques that bring the heart rate down, like taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, are calming,” says Joseph Gonzalez-Heydrich, MD, a senior attending psychiatrist at Boston Children’s Hospital and senior author on the paper. “So we hypothesized that if children learned techniques to lower their heart rate and thus their arousal while playing a challenging game, then they would be able to use these techniques during conflicts at home and school.”

After testing 40 children aged 10 to 17 in a psychiatric clinic, “Changes in children’s own ratings of their anger were not significantly different between the two groups,” notes Gonzalez-Heydrich. “So the biofeedback-based game did not make the children any less angry, but it did help them have more control of the expression of their anger.”

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