Wake-up with no pain: The Impact of Different Wake-up Ringtones on Awakening Status

Abstract

The awakening process sets the tone for daily performance. Traditional alarm sounds like radar or sirens, are often abrupt and startling, which can trigger stress response and emotional problems. Existing research that focuses on human physiological indicators during arousal has not reached the impact of wake-up alarms. This study aims to apply photoplethysmographic (PPG) and electrodermal activity (EDA) sensors to meticulously assess the physical and emotional impact triggered by different alarm tones during wake-up process. Those includes human stress responses such as heart rate, EDA, and emotional state. We selected four type of alarm clock sounds, bird singing, ocean sound, radar sound and old telephone. Participants in this study will first put on EDA and PPG sensors before they take a quick sleep. Then, they will be awakened by either natural or harsh wake-up alarms without knowing it in advance. During the experiment, EDA and PPG sensors were used to monitor their physiological states and the data will be analyzed to identify stress patterns and trends. We specially focus on the sudden change when the alarm goes off and the recovery process followed by. The results indicate that participants awaken to harsh alarms had a more intense change in heart rate and emotional stress, while the signal in group of natural sounds was smoother. Our findings provide empirical evidence on the relationship between wake-up alarm sounds and stress responses. There is strong evidence(p-value<0.025) that arousal with more natural sounds causes less heart rate and emotional changes.