📄 social_science

School-Based Relaxation Interventions and Cognitive Emotion Regulation: A Comparative Study on Mindfulness, Music, and Plant-Based Sound Stimulation

This pragmatic cluster trial in Southern Italian schools found that a brief, curriculum-integrated relaxation protocol significantly improved cognitive emotion regulation, particularly for students with high initial maladaptive strategies, while its effects on dispositional mindfulness were heterogeneous and moderated by baseline levels rather than showing uniform gains across groups.

Original authors: Domenico Cafaro

Published 2026-07-09

📖 5 min read🧠 Deep dive

CC BY 4.0

Original authors: Domenico Cafaro

Original paper licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). ✨ This is an AI-generated explanation of the paper below. It is not written or endorsed by the authors. For technical accuracy, refer to the original paper. Read full disclaimer

The Big Picture: A "Relaxation Buffet" in a School

Imagine a school in Southern Italy where teachers wanted to help stressed students relax. Instead of just telling them to "calm down," they set up a 12-week relaxation club that met for 15 minutes during regular class time.

Think of this study as a taste-test experiment. The researchers wanted to see if the background noise changed how well the relaxation worked. They divided the students into four different groups, like four different tables at a buffet:

The "Living Orchestra" Table (Group B1): Students listened to a standard relaxation script while a special device played music generated in real-time by a plant. The plant's electrical signals were turned into unpredictable, gentle sounds.
The "Classic Playlist" Table (Group B2): Students listened to the same script but with a standard, pre-recorded calming music track.
The "Silent Room" Table (Group B3): Students listened to the script with no music at all, just the teacher's voice.
The "Regular Class" Table (Group B4): These students did nothing special. They just had their normal lessons (the control group).

What Did They Measure?

The researchers checked the students' "mental fitness" before the club started (Time 0) and after it finished (Time 1). They looked at two main things:

Mindfulness: How good are you at paying attention to the present moment without judging it? (Like being a calm observer of your own thoughts).
Emotion Regulation: How do you handle tough feelings? Do you use helpful strategies (like taking a deep breath) or unhelpful ones (like blaming yourself or worrying endlessly)?

The Surprising Results: It's Not One-Size-Fits-All

If you expected the "Plant Music" group to win the gold medal, the results were a bit more complicated. Here is what actually happened:

1. The "Plant Music" Didn't Make Everyone Super-Relaxed
The study found that no single group became significantly more "mindful" than the others just because of the music. Whether you heard the plant, the playlist, or silence, the overall change in mindfulness was similar.

The Analogy: Imagine giving everyone a pair of running shoes. Some people run faster, some don't. The shoes (the music) didn't automatically make everyone a champion runner.

2. The "Starting Line" Matters Most
The most important discovery was that where you started mattered more than which music you listened to.

For students who were already very good at relaxing (High Mindfulness): Their scores actually went down slightly after the program.
- The Analogy: Think of a glass that is already full of water. If you try to pour more in, it just spills over. These students had "ceiling effects"—there wasn't much room for them to get better, so their scores naturally drifted back down.
For students who were struggling (Low Mindfulness): Their scores tended to go up.
- The Analogy: These students had an empty glass. The relaxation program helped fill it up a bit, even if the music didn't change the outcome.

3. The Real Winner: Fixing "Bad Habits" of the Mind
The study found the biggest success in Cognitive Emotion Regulation, specifically for students who started with a lot of "bad habits" (like constant worrying or self-blame).

The "Bad Habit" Fix: Students who started with high levels of unhelpful thinking saw a big improvement. They learned to stop the negative loops in their heads.
The Music Difference: Interestingly, the groups listening to Pre-recorded Music and Voice Only did the best job at helping these struggling students stop their bad thinking habits.
The Plant Twist: The group with the Plant Music actually saw a slight worsening in these habits for students who started with low levels of bad habits.
- The Analogy: Imagine the plant music was a strange, new flavor of ice cream. For someone who already loves ice cream (a healthy mindset), the weird new flavor might be confusing or distracting, making them focus too much on the taste instead of enjoying the treat. It didn't hurt the "experts," but it didn't help the "beginners" either.

4. The Control Group Got Worse
The students who did nothing (the control group) actually saw their ability to handle emotions get slightly worse over time.

The Analogy: If you don't exercise your muscles, they get weaker. The relaxation program acted like a "mental vitamin" that stopped students from getting worse, even if it didn't turn everyone into an Olympic athlete.

Was It a Good Experience?

Yes! The students rated the program 3.5 out of 5 stars. They found it pleasant, useful, and something they would recommend to friends. This suggests that schools can easily fit these short relaxation breaks into the day without students complaining.

The Bottom Line

This study teaches us that relaxation isn't magic that works the same way for everyone.

It works best as a preventative shield to stop students from getting worse.
It is most helpful for students who are already struggling with negative thinking patterns.
The "Plant Music" was a cool, new idea, but it didn't beat the standard music or silence. In fact, for some students, the novelty of the plant music might have been a little distracting.

The researchers conclude that while the plant sound is an interesting experiment, the real value of these school programs lies in giving students a routine to manage their emotions, especially if they are starting from a place of stress.

Technical Summary: School-Based Relaxation Interventions and Cognitive Emotion Regulation

Problem Statement
Contemporary school environments impose high cognitive demands and emotional pressures on adolescents. While relaxation techniques such as mindfulness, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), autogenic training (AT), and guided imagery are known to support attention and emotional regulation, evidence regarding their comparative effectiveness in school settings remains heterogeneous. Existing literature suggests that while these interventions can produce positive effects, differences between specific techniques often attenuate when compared against active controls, likely due to shared non-specific factors (e.g., ritualization, attentional quiet). Furthermore, the specific impact of the acoustic context accompanying these practices—particularly novel, bio-electrically generated sounds—remains unexplored in educational settings. The study addresses whether a brief, curriculum-integrated relaxation protocol influences dispositional mindfulness and cognitive emotion regulation differently when delivered under varying auditory conditions (plant-generated sound, prerecorded music, voice-only) compared to a control group.

Methodology
The study was a pragmatic, cluster-randomized trial conducted in nine lower secondary school classes in Southern Italy ( $N=146$ enrolled; analytic $N=137$ ). Classes were stratified by school site and randomly allocated to four parallel arms:

B1 (Plant Music): Relaxation accompanied by real-time sound generated by a Dracaena marginata plant via a Bamboo M device converting bioimpedance to audio.
B2 (Prerecorded Music): Relaxation accompanied by a standard, lossless audio track matched in volume to B1.
B3 (Voice Only): Relaxation with no background music.
B4 (Control): Teaching-as-usual.

Intervention Protocol:
All experimental groups received 12 sessions (15 minutes each) during curricular hours. The protocol utilized a standardized multicomponent sequence rotating through basic mindfulness, AT, PMR, and guided visualization. Delivery employed a calm voice, slow pace, and non-clinical language. Fidelity was monitored via operational logs, and blinding of students/teachers was not feasible due to the nature of the intervention.

Measures:
Data were collected at baseline (T0) and post-intervention (T1).

Primary Outcome: Dispositional mindfulness measured via the I-CAMM (Italian Comprehensive Attention and Mindfulness Measure).
Secondary Outcome: Cognitive emotion regulation measured via the CERQ-IS (Italian short version), assessing both adaptive and maladaptive strategies.
Acceptability: Assessed via a post-intervention satisfaction questionnaire (17-item Likert scale).

Key Results

Dispositional Mindfulness (I-CAMM): A significant main effect of time was observed across the full sample, but the Group $\times$ Time interaction was not significant. However, stratification by baseline levels revealed heterogeneous trajectories: students with high baseline mindfulness scores tended to show reductions (worsening) over time, while those with low baseline scores showed trends toward improvement. This suggests regression-to-the-mean or ceiling effects rather than uniform gains from the intervention.
Cognitive Emotion Regulation (CERQ):
- Adaptive Strategies: Changes were moderated by baseline levels. Students with low baseline adaptive scores in the Plant (B1) and Music (B2) groups showed significant improvements.
- Maladaptive Strategies: The intervention acted as a "trajectory regulator" based on initial profiles. Students with high baseline maladaptive scores showed significant reductions in these strategies, particularly in the Prerecorded Music (B2) and Voice-only (B3) conditions. Conversely, the control group showed a relative worsening in maladaptive strategies over time.
- Plant Condition (B1): Notably, students with low baseline maladaptive scores in the Plant condition showed a significant increase (worsening) in maladaptive strategies, suggesting a potential mismatch between the novel stimulus and the needs of students with already adaptive coping profiles.
Acceptability: The program received medium-to-high acceptability ratings ( $M=3.46/5$ ), supporting its feasibility and transferability within school routines.

Key Contributions

Novel Acoustic Context: The study introduces and tests "plant-generated music" (bio-electric sound stimulation) in a school setting, an area previously unexplored. While it did not demonstrate a linear advantage over other conditions, it establishes a new empirical avenue for investigating unconventional auditory stimuli in relaxation.
Baseline Moderation: The research highlights that the efficacy of school-based relaxation is not uniform but is heavily dependent on students' baseline profiles. The intervention appears most effective for students with higher initial maladaptive strategies, acting as a selective mechanism within a universal program.
Process-Oriented Findings: The study suggests that brief school-based protocols may primarily influence specific cognitive emotion regulation processes (particularly the reduction of maladaptive strategies) rather than producing immediate, uniform shifts in dispositional mindfulness.

Significance and Claims
The paper claims that brief, multicomponent relaxation protocols integrated into school curricula are feasible and acceptable. However, it modestly asserts that these interventions do not produce uniform improvements in dispositional mindfulness across all students. Instead, the findings underscore that the value of such interventions lies in their ability to modulate emotion regulation trajectories, particularly for students starting with higher levels of maladaptive coping strategies.

The authors conclude that the plant-based sound stimulation is a novel and feasible component, but its effects are contingent on initial student profiles and may operate through mechanisms of novelty or differential receptivity rather than consistent additive benefits. The study advocates for a process-oriented perspective in school-based well-being, where baseline characteristics and contextual factors are critical in determining how students respond to relaxation programs. Future research is called for to isolate mechanisms, extend follow-up periods, and incorporate multimodal outcomes to clarify the durability of these effects.