No effect of gamification on attrition from a longitudinal cognitive testing study

Lumsden, Jim; Skinner, Andy; Coyle, David; Lawrence, Natalia; Munafò, Marcus R

doi:10.31234/osf.io/ya4sn

Cited by 2 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

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“…The dependent variables of interest were participant attrition, scores on a questionnaire of enjoyment and engagement, two pilot objective measures of engagement, and stop signal reaction times (SSRTs). We preregistered the study on the Open Science Framework [ 45 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Attrition from Web-Based Cognitive Testing: A Repeated Measures Comparison of Gamification Techniques

Lumsden¹,

Skinner²,

Coyle³

et al. 2017

J Med Internet Res

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BackgroundThe prospect of assessing cognition longitudinally and remotely is attractive to researchers, health practitioners, and pharmaceutical companies alike. However, such repeated testing regimes place a considerable burden on participants, and with cognitive tasks typically being regarded as effortful and unengaging, these studies may experience high levels of participant attrition. One potential solution is to gamify these tasks to make them more engaging: increasing participant willingness to take part and reducing attrition. However, such an approach must balance task validity with the introduction of entertaining gamelike elements.ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate the effects of gamelike features on participant attrition using a between-subjects, longitudinal Web-based testing study.MethodsWe used three variants of a common cognitive task, the Stop Signal Task (SST), with a single gamelike feature in each: one variant where points were rewarded for performing optimally; another where the task was given a graphical theme; and a third variant, which was a standard SST and served as a control condition. Participants completed four compulsory test sessions over 4 consecutive days before entering a 6-day voluntary testing period where they faced a daily decision to either drop out or continue taking part. Participants were paid for each session they completed.ResultsA total of 482 participants signed up to take part in the study, with 265 completing the requisite four consecutive test sessions. No evidence of an effect of gamification on attrition was observed. A log-rank test showed no evidence of a difference in dropout rates between task variants (χ22=3.0, P=.22), and a one-way analysis of variance of the mean number of sessions completed per participant in each variant also showed no evidence of a difference (F2,262=1.534, P=.21, partial η2=0.012).ConclusionsOur findings raise doubts about the ability of gamification to reduce attrition from longitudinal cognitive testing studies.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The data that form the basis of our results are available on request from the University of Bristol Research Data Repository [ 65 ].…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Attrition from Web-Based Cognitive Testing: A Repeated Measures Comparison of Gamification Techniques

Lumsden¹,

Skinner²,

Coyle³

et al. 2017

J Med Internet Res

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“…Gamification is the application of game design elements to improve participant motivation (Lumsden et al, 2016a;Warsinsky et al, 2021). Gamification has previously been trialled in cognitive rehabilitation training and clinical contexts (Lim et al, 2012;van der Oord et al, 2012;Armstrong and Landers, 2017).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

A proof-of-concept study exploring the effects of impulsivity on a gamified version of the stop-signal task in children

et al. 2023

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This proof-of-concept study provides an appraisal of a remotely administered gamified Stop-Signal Task (gSST) for future use in studies using child sample. Performance on the standard Stop-Signal (SST) task has been shown previously to differentiate attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder groups from controls. As is the case with the SST, it was envisaged that those with greater impulsivity would perform worse than those with lower levels of impulsivity in the gSST. The potential advantage of the gSST is that it could be perceived as less monotonous than the original SST and has the potential to provide higher data quality in child samples, however future research will need to be conducted to determine this. The gSST was administered remotely via video chat to 30 child participants within a community sample aged 8–12 to investigate the effect of ADHD symptoms and intrinsic motivation on gSST performance. Qualitative data was collected based on feedback from participants to gain insight into how the gSST was received by participants. A positive correlation was observed between impulsive/hyperactivity and gSST performance, however there was insufficient evidence to suggest that impulsivity predicted performance. With regards to accuracy, results suggested that impulsivity level significantly predicted the rate of go-omission errors. No relationships were observed between intrinsic motivation inventory (IMI) subscales and performance or IMI and impulsivity. Nevertheless, mean IMI scores were overarchingly high for each of the IMI subscales, suggesting that regardless of performance and/or level of impulsive behaviour, the child sample obtained in this study demonstrated high levels of intrinsic motivation, which was supported by the predominantly positive subjective feedback provided by the child participants. The present study provides some evidence based on quantitative and qualitative results for the efficacy of gSST for use with children. Future research with a larger sample of children is warranted to examine how performance on the SST and gSST compare/differ.

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No effect of gamification on attrition from a longitudinal cognitive testing study

Cited by 2 publications

References 26 publications

Attrition from Web-Based Cognitive Testing: A Repeated Measures Comparison of Gamification Techniques

Attrition from Web-Based Cognitive Testing: A Repeated Measures Comparison of Gamification Techniques

A proof-of-concept study exploring the effects of impulsivity on a gamified version of the stop-signal task in children

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