DOI: 10.60641/tmss-b406
title: Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) - Virtual Reality

description: YOUth is a large-scale longitudinal cohort study following children from the city of Utrecht and its surrounding areas in their development from pregnancy until early adulthood. The YOUth cohort focuses on neurocognitive development involved in two core characteristics of behavioral development: social competence and behavioral control. YOUth includes children from the general population to cover the whole range of variation in behavioral development, ranging from uncomplicated development, through problem behavior, to psychiatric disorders. To understand why some children develop problematic behavior, and others show resilience, YOUth measures a broad range of biological, child-related and environmental determinants.

YOUth conducts repeated measurements at regular intervals (i.e. 'waves'). Specifically, the study has two inclusion moments: YOUth Baby & Child and YOUth Child & Adolescent. YOUth applies a flexible longitudinal design to the cohorts, meaning that children are measured at broader age ranges (3-year age ranges) at each wave. The main benefit of the flexible age design is that it provides more detailed information on the neurodevelopmental curves over time.

An extensive data set is generated, including 3D-ultrasound sweeps of the fetal brain, eye tracking, EEG, (f)MRI, computer tasks, cognitive measurements and parent-child observations. We also collect a broad range of questionnaires on behavior, personality, health, lifestyle, parenting, child development, use of (social) media and more. Finally, (umbilical) blood samples, buccal swabs, saliva and hair samples are collected at each visit, and stored in the UMC Utrecht Biobank.
description: The Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) is a computerized measure of risk-taking behavior. The BART models real-world risk behavior through the concept balancing the potential for reward versus loss. In the task, the participant is presented with a balloon and offered the chance to earn money by pumping the balloon. Each click causes the balloon to incrementally inflate and money to be added to a counter up until some threshold, at which point the balloon is over-inflated and explodes. Each pump confers greater risk, but also a greater potential reward. If the participant chooses to cash-out prior to the balloon exploding, they collect the money earned for that trial, but if the balloon explodes, earnings for that trial are lost. The goal is to save the most points before the balloons pop, and release them to cash in the points.
description: In YOUth, a variant of the task was created for the Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset. Using this headset, the participant is placed in a large room and stands in front of a table with a balloon and two buttons. Using controllers in each hand, the participant can simply move their hand towards the button to either inflate the balloon or cash-out. There are three different balloon colors: green, yellow and purple. These each have different properties, with the chance of the balloon popping being low, medium, and high, and with each pump giving 1, 2 or 5 points, respectively. There are 24 balloons in total, with the colors presented in a pseudo-random sequence (generated once for all participants). The task may take up to 10 minutes (when participants are not yet finished the task is ended at the 10 minute mark).