“We did.”
“Did you ask about participants’ greatest fears?” Katherine asked. “Was that part of the screening?”
Anita narrowed her eyes and thought carefully. “Not in that many words but… in a sense. The visualization that we designed was based on identifying the root of a patient’s anxiety. So for some individuals, that might be considered their greatest fear.”
“And you used the same visualization for all the students?”
“We did.”
“What was it?” Baxter asked.
“It’s one I’ve used before in my practice. Imagine that the situation you fear—a public speaking event or an argument or whatever it might be—is in front of you, just beyond a threshold in your mind. The first step is to close the door to that threshold and then take a step back from it. Take another step back. Visualize all the steps that led you back to where you are in the present. And anytime you feel an anxiety attack coming on, you take those backward steps all over again.”
“…the visualization wasn’t working. For some reason, instead of walking backward, I felt like someone was pushing me forward.” Sarah Jordan’s voice was clear in her mind. Someone had managed to take the positive visualization developed to conquer fear and turn it upside down.
Katherine asked, “And how long was the study? How many participants?”
“There were around seventy participants, almost all drawn from the student body, but not entirely. We had twelve sessions for each participant. One session a week. So around three months. Then each participant was given a set of exercises to practice on their own and log electronically on a daily basis. We checked at one month, then six months. We were scheduled to do the third follow-up next month.”
“So Sarah Jordan’s incident happened soon after the first six-month check, and the next follow-up hasn’t happened yet,” Katherine said.
“Correct.”
Baxter said, “I’m assuming any abnormal behavior or outbursts would require reporting.”
“Obviously. There’s quite an extensive questionnaire, and then if anything is out of the ordinary, a follow-up phone call would happen.”
Baxter asked, “Who guided the biofeedback sessions? I’m assuming you had a fairly large team with that many people and that many sessions.”
“Yes. We had ten graduate students who were each assigned seven individuals to meet with. So they were conducting around two hours a day of clinical work. Quite intense but overseen by all five of us in turn.”
“And the biofeedback therapies were all the same?”
“They all used the same program, yes. There was a period of introduction, use of feedback sensors to measure heart rate, body temperature, and muscle tension. We paired that with awareness exercises that led to breathing regulation, relaxation techniques, and eventually guided visualization.”
“And did it show promise?”
“Obviously we’re still collecting data, but overall, yes.”
“Negative side effects presented?” Baxter asked.
“Virtually none.” Anita was adamant. “We didn’t change any of their medications. No erratic behavior was reported. The only negative outcome was that for some participants, it simply didn’t work, but we expected that result.” She paused and tapped the edge of her cup. “This was not a groundbreaking study. It wasn’t going to change the world.”
Katherine said, “I got the feeling from Ansel that he thought there was very real publishing potential. Maybe something even directed toward the general market.”
She frowned. “It’s possible. I don’t know that it would garner that much interest from a nonacademic publisher. Honestly, the most innovative thing about the study would probably be the app.”
Katherine blinked. “What app?”
“The reporting app. That was how we required the study participants to log their exercises. Alice Kraft developed it along with one of Ansel’s students.”
“An app?” Something buzzed in the back of Katherine’s mind. “I don’t suppose you have it on your phone, do you?”
Anita shook her head. “The grad students would have all used it, I’m sure, but we didn’t. I don’t consider myself very technologically savvy. It was a very clever idea though. Everyone has a smartphone these days. The app was designed to prompt students at certain times of the day to do their biofeedback exercises; then they would log their results right away. The reports were automatically sent to the server, so there was no room for error or lost data.”
“Fascinating,” Baxter said. “Have you alerted the rest of the students in the study yet?”
“Not yet. We were going to send a message through the app to be on guard for unexpected reactions and to stop doing the prescribed biofeedback exercises immediately.” She shook her head. “I want to do everything right, but I know this is going to be hard for many of the students. There were dozens of reports given to my own grad students that the biofeedback had helped immensely, especially with sleep.”
“That’s interesting,” Katherine said. “Do you have any idea which one of Ansel’s graduate students helped Alice Kraft design the app?”
“I don’t.”
“What would happen to that?” Baxter said. “If this hadn’t happened, would the app eventually have been deleted off the participants’ phones?”
“I imagine so. I’m not familiar with how that would happen. That would have been Alice’s and Ansel’s areas of expertise.”
“Alice Kraft.” Baxter tapped his chin. “She works in the computer engineering department as well as behavioral sciences, correct?”
“She does. Much of Alice’s work has been related to studying cognitive reactions to technology, so she was a perfect addition to the team.”
“I imagine.” Katherine thought back to her conversation with Greg weeks ago. He’d mentioned working with Alice Kraft. Was he the only one?
“Anita,” Baxter said. “This app you used… Who would it have technically belonged to?”
“All the data it collected would be strictly confidential, so—”
“Not the data.” Katherine understood where Baxter’s mind was going. “But the app itself. The design of it.”
“Well, you should know from the Fred lab. Anything designed on university time using university resources would belong to the university.” She looked between them. “But does a biofeedback phone application have any particular monetary value?”
“Oh…” Baxter nodded.
