02 · Visual Anchor
Trataka keeps the task externally visual.
A candle provides a stable visual object of meditation, making gaze behavior directly interpretable as part of the interaction.
02 · Selected Research
VR Mindfulness
Eye-Controlled Interaction as Attentional Scaffolding: Designing Closed-Loop Attention Support in VR Mindfulness Meditation.
Design Question
How much attentional support can be added before the support itself becomes distracting?
When the user looks away from the intended meditation anchor for long enough, the system provides a visual cue that helps bring attention back. The feedback is deliberately lightweight: there is no score, no reward, and no attempt to turn mindfulness into a performance task.
03 · Closed Loop
Feedback appears only after sustained deviation.
Momentary glances are treated as normal. The system intervenes only after attention has remained away from the anchor long enough to indicate likely drift.
04 · Body Anchor
Body Scan changes what “attention” means.
Attention is no longer directed toward a single external object. Comparing Body Scan with Trataka tests whether the same eye-controlled support behaves differently across meditation anchors.
05 · Local Guidance
Visual cues support the body-focused sequence.
Highlighted body regions indicate where attention should move next while the experiment still separates anchor design from eye-controlled feedback.
Closed-Loop Interaction
The system observes attention, waits, and intervenes only when support appears necessary.
The design deliberately avoids constant correction. Feedback timing is part of the research question because excessive intervention can undermine the mindfulness task itself.
06 · Interaction Prototype
See how feedback timing changes the experience.
Move the pointer away from the meditation anchor and remain there. The delayed cue illustrates the closed-loop logic without turning the experience into a scoring task.
Deviation timer
07 · Evaluation
I measured both outcome and interaction cost.
The study combines state anxiety, state mindfulness, NASA-TLX workload, behavioral interaction data, and resting-state fNIRS.
AnxietySTAI-S
MindfulnessState Mindfulness Scale
WorkloadNASA-TLX
NeurophysiologyResting-state fNIRS
08 · Related Study
What happens when the environment, rather than the interaction, does the work?
The related blue–green-space study removes gaze-triggered feedback and instead changes the visual composition of the environment. It compares perceived restoration, anxiety change, and prefrontal resting-state activity across virtual nature conditions.
09 · Findings
The results do not support a simple “eye control is always better” conclusion.
Anxiety decreased
Several VR mindfulness conditions produced meaningful reductions in state anxiety relative to the control condition.
Anchor mattered
Mind-focused mindfulness gains differed by attentional anchor, so visual and body-focused guidance should not be treated as interchangeable.
Workload mattered
Temporal demand, perceived performance, and frustration were associated with anxiety change, reinforcing the need for lightweight feedback.