Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) - Virtual Reality

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.

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).

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Keywords
Constructs
Waves
  • Child and Adolescent

  • 12 years
  •   C
    11.0 - 16.0 years   From 2019-07-04 to 2022-12-01

    Mode of collection MeasurementsAndTests    Behavioral/cognitive task
    Analysis unit Individual
    Instrument name Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART)
    Measure name Virtual Reality Balloon Analoque Risk Task
    References
    You can also access this dataset using the API (see API Docs).