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INVESTIGATING THE RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF THE MINDFLEX**

Abstract

Mindflex® is a commercial product that is marketed as an educational toy. It is sensitive to theta waves (4-7.5 Hz frequency range), and theta waves have been implicated in many cognitive functions, including the control of attention. The current research seeks to determine whether Mindflex is a reliable and valid measure of attention. Participants completed counterbalanced trials of a Mindflex attentional task, the Adult ADHD Self-Report Scale v 1.1, a manual Stroop task, and the Continuous Conjunctive Performance Task (CCPT). The preliminary Kendall tau-b results (n = 117 indicated that severity of ADHD symptoms was negatively correlated with response times for both the incongruent (�� = -.195, p = .012) and congruent (�� = -.16, p = .039) conditions of the Stroop task. ADHD symptoms were positively correlated with commission errors on the CCPT (�� = .184, p = .022), while response times on CCPT were correlated with response times on the Stroop task (incongruent, �� = .151, p = .039; congruent (�� = .196, p = .007). There was a significant speed-accuracy trade-off on the CCPT between response times and commission errors (�� = -.235, p = .002). Most importantly, Mindflex performance was uncorrelated with all other measures. A small sample (n = 12) indicated test-retest reliability was a marginally significantly correlated (�� = .39, p = .083) with performance on the vigilance task for participants tested on consecutive days. Although there was weak evidence for test-retest reliability of the Mindflex task, the data suggests it does not use the same constructs as the manual Stoop task (inhibition of automatic responses), the CCPT (sustained attention), or self-reported ADHD scores.

Acknowledgements

UNG Department of Psychological Sciences

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