This study compared a gamified stop-signal task (SST) against a standard clinical SST.

The standard clinical SST was the taken from the Cantab battery. The gamified SST was a newly developed, prototype SST called Manu, designed to appeal to children. The standard SST was presented on a Motion tablet computer and Manu was presented on an IPod Touch.

The standard SST is a choice-reaction time task with a no-action signal. Participants were asked to respond rapidly to the direction of an arrow on the screen, either left or right. On some trials a tone was played after the arrow was displayed. On these trials the participant had to withhold their response, and simply wait for the next trial to begin. The delay between the arrow-presentation and the tone-presentation was varied using a staircase procedure in order to produce a 50% accuracy rate on stop-trials.

The Manu task is similar in design, but features animation, sounds, narrative scaffolding and points in order to make the task more engaging. Rather than responding to an arrow, participants must high-five (touch the hand of) a character on the screen. The various stimulus directions are replaced by low-fives and high-fives to both the left and right. On a stop trial, a car-horn tone is played and a smaller character appears in the vicinity of the main character's hand. The participant is prompted not to respond in this instance, in case they squash the smaller character. The delay between high-five onset and stop-signal presentation is varied as in the standard SST. 

Participants completed both tasks in a counterbalanced order. Each task was followed by a short questionnaire designed to assess subjective engagement and enjoyment of the task. 

Dependent variables were stop-trial accuracy, go-trial accuracy, failed-stop trial reaction time (RT), go-trial RT and stop-signal reaction time (SSRT). 

Data files and data dictionary can be opened in Excel or SPSS software.