Study on the most adequate respiratory rate parameter for reducing psychophysiological arousal

The main objective of this research is to determine a specific respiratory frequency pattern in order to get greater decreases in subject s skin conductance. In other words, our aim is to accurately know which is the respiratory frequency with the subject gets greater decreases in such measure and, in addition, to concrete the number of respiratory frequencies below baseline to be induced to get greater decreases in skin conductance. In this study a total sample of 71 participants, university healthy students, was used. Results showed that, on the one hand, the most adequate respiratory frequency for reducing participant s arousal was 14 cycles per minute. On the other hand, a concrete and effective respiratory pattern for reducing greater decreases of participant s arousal was found: an accurate induction of three frequencies below baseline.