This task is part of suite of four tasks created for Kinarm researchers in Psychology. The tasks were developed by Dr. Kayne Park of the Boisgontier Lab at the University of Ottawa under a co-funded MITACS project.
This task quantifies selective attention, cognitive control, and the ability to inhibit distracting information. Participants are typically presented with a central target stimulus (e.g., an arrow) surrounded by distracting stimuli (e.g., other arrows) that can either be congruent (pointing in the same direction as the target) or incongruent (pointing in the opposite direction). Participants are instructed to respond to the direction of the target stimulus while ignoring the distracting stimuli. The primary measure of interest in the Flanker task is the difference in response times and accuracy between congruent and incongruent trials.
This task has had criticism for lacking sensitivity in keyboard-based setups. Kinarm users may find the robotic platform is more robust.
Detailed Description
The Flanker task examines executive function (incongruent reaction time – congruent reaction time) by testing the ability to ignore distractions. The objective of the task is to generate rapid movements towards the direction of an arrow that is flanked by multiple distractor arrows. This ability assesses how well an individual can selectively control movements by inhibiting the automatic bias to reach towards the direction that most arrows are pointing towards.
The Kinarm variant is based on the version found here: White, C. N., Ratcliff, R., & Starns, J. J. (2011). Diffusion models of the flanker task: Discrete versus gradual attentional selection. Cognitive Psychology, 63(4), 210–238. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2011.08.001
What’s Included
In the zip file you will find:
- all source code to run the task
- it is ready to run as-is, but is fully editable
- a specification (“BT097”) outlining all the details of the task
- ready-to-go analysis that you can use to generate parameters right away