Battery guide
Impulsivity and Substance Use Battery guide
Four tasks of impulsive action and impulsive choice for substance use research: withholding and stopping responses, delay discounting and risk taking.
- Guide version
- 1.2.0
- Battery version
- 1.0.0
What it measures
Who it is for: Substance use and impulsivity research.
It measures Response inhibition, Action cancellation, Delay discounting and Risk taking.
Response inhibition: Stopping or holding back a response.
Executive function: Planning, switching rules, handling conflict and making decisions.
Scores describe how a person performs on these tasks. Research use only.
Tests in order
The tests run in this order. A study started from the battery keeps the order and the settings.
1. Go/No-Go Task. Measures response inhibition by requiring participants to respond to 'go' stimuli and withhold responses to 'no-go' stimuli.
2. Stop-Signal Task. Measures action cancellation by asking participants to make speeded left/right responses and withhold the response when a stop signal appears.
3. Delay Discounting. Measures how much a delay lowers the value of money, using adjusting choices between an amount today and $100 later.
4. Balloon Risk. Measures risk taking as participants pump balloons for points and decide when to collect before a pop.
| Order | Test | Domain | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Go/No-Go Task | Response inhibition | 4 to 5 minutes |
| 2 | Stop-Signal Task | Response inhibition | 5 to 7 minutes |
| 3 | Delay Discounting | Executive function | 3 to 5 minutes |
| 4 | Balloon Risk | Executive function | 5 to 9 minutes |
Time and devices
Allow about 26 minutes for the whole battery. The table gives each test's time.
The battery has timed tests. Participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad, and the timed tests run in full screen. Tablets and phones cannot run it.
On a desktop or laptop the screen must be at least 1024 by 700 pixels.
Participants need Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
| Test | Timing | Devices |
|---|---|---|
| Go/No-Go Task | Timed | Desktop or laptop |
| Stop-Signal Task | Timed | Desktop or laptop |
| Delay Discounting | Untimed | Desktop or laptop, tablet or phone |
| Balloon Risk | Untimed | Desktop or laptop, tablet or phone |
Languages
Runs in all eight participant languages.
How to give it
Start a study from the battery in the app. The tests, their order and their settings are already set and stay fixed. If you change, reorder or customize a test, the study becomes a custom study and no longer carries the battery.
Each test opens with its instructions. Participants see these:
Go/No-Go Task: Press the spacebar when you see a GREEN circle (Go). Do NOT press anything when you see a RED circle (No-Go). Respond as quickly and accurately as you can.
Stop-Signal Task: Respond quickly to left and right arrows. If the arrow turns red, try to stop yourself and do not press a key.
Delay Discounting: Choose between an amount of money today and $100 after a delay. The money is hypothetical.
Balloon Risk: Pump each balloon to add points, then collect before it pops. A popped balloon loses its points.
| Step | Before you invite participants |
|---|---|
| 1 | Decide which details your analysis needs, such as recent substance use, and collect them with your own forms. |
| 2 | Tell participants that the money and points in the tasks are not paid out. |
| 3 | Ask participants to use a desktop or laptop in a quiet room, in one sitting. |
| 4 | Review quality flags before comparing groups. |
How each test is scored
The server scores each test when the participant finishes it. The primary score is the one the app compares with a norm. The other scores are reported with it.
Every result records its scoring version. For this battery they are Go/No-Go Task 1.0.0, Stop-Signal Task 1.2.0, Delay Discounting 2.0.0 and Balloon Risk 2.0.0.
| Test | Score | What it is | Better |
|---|---|---|---|
| Go/No-Go Task | Mean Go RT (ms) | Average reaction time on correct Go trials. Reflects processing speed for respond conditions. | Lower is better |
| Go/No-Go Task | Go Accuracy (proportion) | Proportion of Go trials with a correct response. Low values suggest inattention. | Higher is better |
| Go/No-Go Task | No-Go Accuracy (proportion) | Proportion of No-Go trials correctly withheld. Directly measures inhibitory success. | Higher is better |
| Go/No-Go Task | d-Prime (primary) | Signal detection sensitivity: Z(hit rate) - Z(false alarm rate). Separates discriminability from response bias. | Higher is better |
| Go/No-Go Task | Commission Errors | Responses on No-Go trials (false alarms). Primary index of inhibitory failure. | Lower is better |
| Go/No-Go Task | Omission Errors | Missed responses on Go trials. Indicates lapses in sustained attention. | Lower is better |
| Stop-Signal Task | Stop-Signal Reaction Time (ms, primary) | Integration-method estimate of the covert stopping latency: the nth fastest go RT minus the mean stop-signal delay, with n the number of go trials times p(respond|signal). Every go trial counts, choice errors included, and a go trial with no response counts at the slowest go RT (Verbruggen et al. 2019). | Lower is better when validity flags pass |
| Stop-Signal Task | SSRT, Correct Go Trials Only (ms) | The estimate used before scoring version 1.1.0: correct go RTs only, with go omissions and choice errors left out. It runs shorter when go trials were missed. For comparing with earlier results. | Informational |
| Stop-Signal Task | Stop Success Rate (proportion) | Proportion of stop trials where the participant successfully withheld a response. | Near 0.50 is expected under a working staircase |
| Stop-Signal Task | Go Reaction Time (ms) | Mean reaction time on correct go trials. | Informational |
| Stop-Signal Task | Go Accuracy (proportion) | Proportion of go trials answered with the correct arrow key. | Higher is better |
| Stop-Signal Task | Failed-Stop RT (ms) | Mean reaction time on stop trials where the participant failed to inhibit. | Should usually be faster than go RT |
| Stop-Signal Task | Valid SSRT Flag (0/1) | Indicates whether core SSRT validity checks passed. | 1 indicates interpretable SSRT |
| Delay Discounting | Area Under the Curve (proportion, primary) | Area under the indifference points, with delays and amounts scaled from 0 to 1. A value of 1 means no discounting. | Higher means less discounting |
| Delay Discounting | Discount Rate (k) | Hyperbolic k fitted to the indifference points with V = A / (1 + kD), with the delay D in days. | Higher means steeper discounting |
| Delay Discounting | Indifference Point at 1 Month ($) | Amount today judged equal to $100 in 1 month. Points are also reported at 1 week, 6 months, 1 year and 5 years. | Higher means less discounting |
| Delay Discounting | Immediate Choice Rate (proportion) | Share of all choices that took the amount today. | Informational |
| Delay Discounting | Consistency Flag | 1 when the indifference points pass both Johnson and Bickel (2008) checks. 0 when a point rises more than $20 above the one before it, or the last point is not at least $10 below the first. | 1 supports interpretation |
| Balloon Risk | Adjusted Average Pumps (pumps, primary) | Mean pumps on balloons that did not pop. | Higher means more risk taking |
| Balloon Risk | Explosion Rate (proportion) | Share of balloons that popped. | Informational |
| Balloon Risk | Total Points (points) | Points collected across all balloons. | Informational |
| Balloon Risk | Risk Escalation (pumps per balloon) | Change in pumps from one balloon to the next, from a straight-line fit over balloons that did not pop. | Positive values mean rising risk taking |
| Balloon Risk | Adjusted Pumps by Block (pumps) | Adjusted average pumps within each block of 10 balloons, reported as adjustedPumpsBlock1, adjustedPumpsBlock2 and so on. | Informational |
Session quality rules
The app checks every session when it scores it and records one of four states.
An Invalid session stays in the study's results, labelled with its reason, and does not count toward norms.
A session can carry warnings and still be valid. The results list the warnings next to the scores.
| State | What it means |
|---|---|
| Norm-ready | The session passed every check and a norm exists for it, so the app can show a percentile. |
| Raw-only | The scores are usable, but the app shows no percentile. Typical reasons are no norm for the test, changed settings, or a warning that makes a comparison unfair, such as a restart or a screen too short for the display. |
| Invalid technical | The setup broke the timing or the task. Examples are leaving full screen, a browser tab that lost focus during a timed test, and long pauses. |
| Invalid behavioral | The responses suggest the task was not done as asked. Examples are a failed attention check, repeated switching away from the task, and accuracy at or below chance on a choice task. |
Published norms used
No published norm is used for any test in this battery.
ConductCognition also builds norms from its own participants. An age band of a test uses them once it holds at least 50 valid sessions on the same device and input type, run with standard settings and scored with the current scoring version. Sessions from paying customers' studies and from clinical or patient samples do not count.
A report shows a percentile only when the app has stored one for that session. Otherwise it shows the raw scores.
Every reference group covers ages 18 and over. No reference group covers a participant under 18, so their report shows raw scores only, and their sessions do not count toward norms.
How to cite
ConductScience, Inc. Impulsivity and Substance Use Battery guide, version 1.2.0. ConductCognition. https://conductcognition.com/batteries/impulsivity-substance-use/guide
Cite the guide version you used. Name the battery version (1.0.0) and the scoring versions listed in this guide.