Evaluating Attentional Impulsivity: A Biomechatronic Approach

TL;DR

This paper introduces a biomechatronic system to assess attentional impulsivity, providing a novel, low-cost method that correlates with traditional neuropsychological tests and differentiates impulsivity levels.

Contribution

It presents a new biomechatronic assessment tool for impulsivity that aligns with neuropsychological evaluations and offers a practical, cost-effective alternative.

Findings

The system successfully generated an attentional impulsivity score.

It differentiated between high and low impulsivity participants.

Preliminary results support the validity of the approach.

Abstract

Executive function, also known as executive control, is a multifaceted construct encompassing several cognitive abilities, including working memory, attention, impulse control, and cognitive flexibility. To accurately measure executive functioning skills, it is necessary to develop assessment tools and strategies that can quantify the behaviors associated with cognitive control. Impulsivity, a range of cognitive control deficits, is typically evaluated using conventional neuropsychological tests. However, this study proposes a biomechatronic approach to assess impulsivity as a behavioral construct, in line with traditional neuropsychological assessments. The study involved thirty-four healthy adults who completed the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS-11) as an initial step. A low-cost biomechatronic system was developed, and an approach based on standard neuropsychological tests, including the trail-making test and serial subtraction-by-seven, was used to evaluate impulsivity. Three tests were conducted: WTMT-A (numbers only), WTMT-B (numbers and letters), and a dual-task of WTMT-A and serial subtraction-by-seven. The preliminary findings suggest that the proposed instrument and experiments successfully generated an attentional impulsivity score and differentiated between participants with high and low attentional impulsivity.