Behavioral Indicator of Resiliency to Distress Task - ABCD (BIRD)
FREE for use with an Inquisit Lab or Inquisit Web license.Background
The Behavioral Indicator of Resiliency to Distress (BIRD) task is a child friendly computerized behavioral assessment tool published by Stacey Daughters and colleagues in 2009. The BIRD task was developed as a child friendly behavioral measure of children's distress tolerance, specifically their ability to stay on task while continuously feeling emotionally stressed or frustrated.
The BIRD task is used as part of the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD Study®), a decade long longitudinal study on brain development and child health supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The ABCD BIRD task is run on tablets (in-person testing) and on smartphones (remote testing). It runs the basic INQUISIT BIRD task with slightly different timing parameters and adds several VAS scales as explicit measures of anxiety and frustration.
Task Procedure
The participant is presented with a circle of 10 boxes. Randomly a box gets highlighted in green and the participant is asked to press the box as fast as possible to earn a point and free a bird from its cage. The points are only earned if the participant is fast enough to press the box before the next one is highlighted and the participant can always see how many points they have earned at any given point.
The participant works through three timed levels with each level increasing the speed with which the boxes are highlighted. During the last level the participant has the option to quit the task prematurely by pressing an escape button.
What it Measures
The BIRD Task is a behavioral assessment tool of distress tolerance in children and adolescents.
Psychological domains
- Emotion Regulation: Ability to monitor, evaluate, and modify one's emotional responses in a way that aligns with one's goals and values
- Distress Tolerance: Ability to stay on a goal-oriented task while enduring emotional distress
- Impulsivity: Tendency toward rapid reactions to internal or external stimuli without considerations of negative long-term consequences
Main Performance Metrics
- Quitting: whether the escape button is pressed
- Level 3 Duration: time spent on the last, most challenging level
Psychiatric Conditions
Lower distress tolerance is linked to
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Drug Abuse
- Alcoholism
- Psychopathy
- Criminal Behavior
Available Test Variations
An adaptation of the Bird test of distress tolerance used in the ABCD Consortium's longitudinal study on cognitive development from childhood to early adulthood.
An adaptation of the Bird test of distress tolerance used in the ABCD Consortium's longitudinal study on cognitive development from childhood to early adulthood.
References
Search Google Scholar for peer-reviewed, published research using the Inquisit Behavioral Indicator of Resiliency to Distress Task - ABCD (BIRD).
Links
Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development Study (ABCD). The NIH funded ABCD Study is the largest long-term study of brain development and child health in the United States, tracking biological and behavioral development of 10,000 participants from childhood to adulthood..