An estimated 8.7% to 9.8% of school-age children in the United States have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), affecting 4.3 to 4.9 million public school students. ADHD is a costly disorder that often goes untreated, especially among adolescents. Accessible computer-based programs have emerged to address the neurocognitive deficits of ADHD, but results to date have been disappointing. In this study, we tested the acceptability, playability, and user satisfaction of a novel planning/organization skills training game, called "ATHEMOS," based on an established psychosocial treatment package (i.e., Challenging Horizons Program). We conducted eight focus groups during a three-year development period, using feedback from 72 young adolescents with ADHD to iteratively improve the game. Then, during a pilot study in the fourth year, we collected data from 16 young adolescents who played the game as part of a 6- to 16-week school-based intervention. Our findings suggest that the serious game resulted in acceptability and playability ratings only moderately below that of recreational games (δ = -0.40). Critically, average perceptions remained positive when delivered within a school-based ADHD intervention over several weeks or months, with strong overall user satisfaction. Boys found the game more acceptable than girls, with ratings near that of recreational games (δ = -0.23). We conclude that computer-assisted behavior interventions appeal to adolescents with ADHD and offer a potentially promising treatment delivery method in schools.
Copyright: © 2023 Schultz et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.