Improving blood pressure estimation through internal and environmental feedback.

Different bodily sensations and situational factors covary with changes in systolic blood pressure (SBP). The present experiment explored whether an awareness of SBP-related cues could help individuals to estimate their own SBP levels more accurately. Sixty-four adults (53 women and 11 men) participated in two experimental sessions 3 months apart. Immediately following each of 13 task and intervening baseline periods of each of the two sessions, subjects estimated their SBP and rated the degree to which they were experiencing each of 10 physical symptoms and moods (i.e., internal cues). In addition, independent judges rated the extent to which various situational factors were present during each task and baseline. Within-subject correlations between internal and situational cues with SBP served as the basis for subjects' receiving one of four randomly assigned types of feedback: no feedback, internal cue feedback, situational cue feedback, or biosituational feedback based on both internal and situational cues. In the second experimental session 3 months later, subjects in the biosituational feedback condition were significantly better at estimating SBP than were individuals in any of the other conditions. Implications of biosituational feedback as an alternative to traditional biofeedback are discussed.