Schedule of Events | Symposia

Sketchpad Series

Naturalistic assessment of response inhibition in adolescence using gamification

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 29, 2025, 3:00 – 5:00 pm EDT, Back Bay Ballroom/Republic Ballroom

Larisa-Maria Dina¹ (larisa.dinu@kcl.ac.uk), Martin Dechant², Maximilian Friehs³, Eleanor Dommett¹; ¹King's College London, ²University College London, ³University of Twente

Inhibitory control is essential for goal-directed behaviour, and impairment is associated with numerous psychiatric disorders. Despite its importance in everyday behaviours and psychopathology, it is typically measured in non-naturalistic, tightly controlled environments, often using paradigms that often rely on static, decontextualized tasks. Games, and gamified tasks that integrate game-like elements for non-gaming purposes, are intrinsically intuitive and facilitate a level of enjoyment, therefore offering a promising approach to increase participant engagement and age appropriateness. This is especially important for the assessment of inhibitory control, which develops progressively from childhood through adolescence into early adulthood. Our recent review of naturalistic assessments of inhibitory control highlighted a paucity of studies using gamification in adolescence. To address this gap, the current study aims to validate a block-designed gamified stop-signal task (gSST) against a standard computerised stop-signal task (SST) using a remote study design in a UK-based sample of 10- to 24-year-olds. The aims of this study are to (1) establish if the gSST is suitable for capturing neurodevelopmental differences in inhibitory control, (2) validate a block-designed version of a naturalistic inhibition task with the view to integrate it with neuroimaging techniques utilising the hemodynamic response function; and (3) determine the feasibility and acceptability of the gSST in remote studies. The results of this proof-of-concept study may open potential new approaches to studying cognitive development, providing a validated block-designed, naturalistic task that can be used outside the laboratory, therefore facilitating data collection from difficult to recruit samples, such as adolescents.

Topic Area: EXECUTIVE PROCESSES: Monitoring & inhibitory control