The Prolonged Effect on Respiratory Sinus Arrhythmia Response of Individual with Internet Gaming Disorder via Breathing Exercise

Students playing Internet game become a daily activity in campus life. They usually struggle for fun and stay at audio-visual stimuli of Internet games for a long period of time. Some players hardly controlling the impulses of game engagement despite negative consequences can be described as a term of Internet gaming disorder (IGD). They always perform a psychological property, called tolerance symptom, for increasing the amounts of playing time to achieve satisfaction. Studies found that breathing exercise can alleviate IGD symptoms because breathing can facilitate the psychophysiological regulation. Few studies, moreover, observed the effect of breathing exercise on tolerance response of IGD symptom. This study explores the prolonged effect on respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) of individuals with IGD from rest to watching game videos as stimuli through abdominal breathing (AB) training. 7 persons of high-risk IGD (HIGD) and 17 persons of low-risk IGD (LIGD) were recruited. The results showed that both of HIGD and LIGD presented an increasing RSA value with AB training from rest to stimuli. In contrast to those with LIGD, those with HIGD showed higher RSA value during negative stimuli. Our findings suggested that AB training can be a potential method to reduce psychophysiological responses of persons with HIGD during game-related cue stimuli, negative game especially. It may provide researchers insight into the effect of breathing exercises on psychophysiology responses of persons with IGD and further develop related application, such as alleviative method. A further study could investigate the effect on autonomic nervous system activities for a long-period AB training.