Need a Cognitive Psychology Task? You’ve Come to The Right Place!
Overview
These are the tasks I made in PyCharm with assistance from AI. On this page you can find executable files of commonly used cognitive psychology tasks. The purpose of this page is to share these tasks with counselors, psychotherapists, researchers, and students who lack coding experience. If you want to look at and edit the Python files, they are available on my GitHub.
Cognitive tasks either provide strong evidence of their use in psychotherapy or indicate the need for more research. Discussions and citations are included to demonstrate their potential. There is enough evidence to suggest that exploring the use of reaction time assessments in psychotherapy could be beneficial. However, more research is needed before their use in forensic and psychotherapy becomes widespread; statistical results need to be more widely disseminated, tasks need to be standardized, the distance from the screen needs to be consistent, and the button configuration needs to be intuitive and homogeneous. The button configuration for most of these tasks is designed around a standard keyboard, a USB number pad, and a modified number pad with colored keycaps. The number pad and colored keycaps of these can be found relatively cheaply on Amazon.
I update this website relatively frequently to include more executables. The tasks are found here, on the first page. The second page contains executables for commonly used psychological assessments. The third page contains a link to my GitHub repository, where you can clone the code into your IDE. There is also advice for beginner coders. The fourth slide, I do not update frequently, but it contains more discussions and research on cognitive tasks. The fifth and final page contains citations and links to my current research projects.
Finally any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. If you have any feedback, please contact me via the email listed at the bottom of the page. I am very much still a novice at coding so any feedback will help me learn.
If you want to use this website, please cite my presentation:
DiPonzio, T. (2026, March 23). Cognitive Tasks For Psychotherapy & Counseling [Conference Poster]. Warner Research Days, Rochester, NY, United States. 10.13140/RG.2.2.17392.32009
Stroop Task
Rationale and Discussion
The Stroop task is a measure of executive function and impulse regulation. You will be shown words in blue, red, green, or yellow ink and must press the corresponding button. There are some variations of the Stroop Task, such as the Drug Stroop (Carpenter et al., 2006) and a Pain-Salient version (Roelofs et al., 2002).
The emotional Stroop is a variation in which a person has to respond to emotionally salient words with congruent or incongruent faces (Williams et al., 1985). These faces are not perfect as they are AI-generated. There are online face libraries hosted by various universities. I did not use their faces as it violated their ethics and terms of service. However, this task is available on my GitHub and can be easily edited to fit your research needs.
I also include a scary Stroop, which displays a frightening image for 300 milliseconds before proceeding to the standard Stroop task. A task designed to mimic intense fight or flight responses as a way of measuring how threatening stimuli can affect cognitive processing ability. Although, to my knowledge, this task is not yet validated. There are multiple kinds of strops that can be accessed, including salient terms related to past traumatic events (Fan & Kang, 2025; Khanna et al., 2017; Ueda et al., 2025).
Citations and Further Reading
Carpenter, K. M., Schreiber, E., Church, S., & McDowell, D. (2006). Drug Stroop performance: relationships with primary substance of use and treatment outcome in a drug-dependent outpatient sample. Addictive behaviors, 31(1), 174–181. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.addbeh.2005.04.012
Ceceli, A. O., Huang, Y., Gaudreault, P. O., McClain, N. E., King, S. G., Kronberg, G., Brackett, A., Hoberman, G. N., Gray, J. H., Garland, E. L., Alia-Klein, N., & Goldstein, R. Z. (2023). Recovery of inhibitory control prefrontal cortex function in inpatients with heroin use disorder: a 15-week longitudinal fMRI study. medRxiv:: the preprint server for health sciences, 2023.03.28.23287864. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.28.23287864
DeVito, E. E., Kiluk, B. D., Nich, C., Mouratidis, M., & Carroll, K. M. (2018). Drug Stroop: Mechanisms of response to computerized cognitive behavioral therapy for cocaine dependence in a randomized clinical trial. Drug and alcohol dependence, 183, 162–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2017.10.022
Fan, L., & Kang, T. (2025). Early childhood trauma and its long-term impact on cognitive and emotional development: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Annals of medicine, 57(1), 2536199. https://doi.org/10.1080/07853890.2025.2536199
Khanna, M. M., Badura-Brack, A. S., McDermott, T. J., Embury, C. M., Wiesman, A. I., Shepherd, A., Ryan, T. J., Heinrichs-Graham, E., & Wilson, T. W. (2017). Veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder exhibit altered emotional processing and attentional control during an emotional Stroop task. Psychological medicine, 47(11), 2017–2027. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291717000460
Roelofs, J., Peters, M. L., Zeegers, M. P., & Vlaeyen, J. W. (2002). The modified Stroop paradigm as a measure of selective attention towards pain-related stimuli among chronic pain patients: a meta-analysis. European journal of pain (London, England), 6(4), 273–281. https://doi.org/10.1053/eujp.2002.0337
Ueda, N., Lin, M., Itoh, M., Hori, H., Narita, Z., Niwa, M., Ino, K., Narita, M., Nakano, W., Imai, R., Matsui, M., Kamo, T., & Kim, Y. (2025). Decreased non-emotional working memory capacity in women with PTSD: association with symptomatology. European journal of psychotraumatology, 16(1), 2543079. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008066.2025.2543079
Williams, J. M. G., Mathews, A., & MacLeod, C. (1996). The emotional Stroop task and psychopathology. Psychological Bulletin, 120(1), 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.120.1.3
Face Emotional Recognition Task
Executable files
Rationale and Discussion
The FERT is a task designed to assess bias in emotional processing by presenting different facial expressions alongside several other faces. This task asks you to sort faces into different emotional categories. Both reaction time and accuracy are assessed. Zhang and colleagues (2016) found that individuals with different personality disorders responded differently to the task. Individuals with Narsissistic Personality Disorder had worse performance on happy faces, and individuals with Anti-social Personality Disorder had only accuracy overall. Borderline personality disorder was not investigated, but has been investigated by other researchers (Wrege et al., 2021; Daros et al., 2013). Major Depressive Disorder was also investigated by Krause and colleagues (2021).
I would like to discuss some shortcomings in this task. I used AI to create the faces, and AI is not great at human emotions. Additionally, I intended this task to be diverse, but I included only three races and no ethnic subgroups, so it’s less diverse and therefore less transferable to real-world contexts. Although the differences in facial identification between individuals of different ethnic backgrounds are not major in real life, they are measured in milliseconds. Wong and colleagues (2020) discuss this in more detail, focusing on accuracy and the number of faces being shown.
The script for this is available on my GitHub, and using the Chicago face database (Ma et al., 2015) or a similar face database allows for better validity in research.
Citations and Further Reading
Daros, A. R., Zakzanis, K. K., & Ruocco, A. C. (2013). Facial emotion recognition in borderline personality disorder. Psychological medicine, 43(9), 1953–1963. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291712002607
Krause, F. C., Linardatos, E., Fresco, D. M., & Moore, M. T. (2021). Facial emotion recognition in major depressive disorder: A meta-analytic review. Journal of affective disorders, 293, 320–328. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.06.053
Ma, D. S., Correll, J., & Wittenbrink, B. (2015). The Chicago face database: A free stimulus set of faces and norming data. Behavior research methods, 47(4), 1122–1135. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-014-0532-5
Streit, M., Ioannides, A. A., Liu, L., Wölwer, W., Dammers, J., Gross, J., Gaebel, W., & Müller-Gärtner, H. W. (1999). Neurophysiological correlates of the recognition of facial expressions of emotion as revealed by magnetoencephalography. Brain research. Cognitive brain research, 7(4), 481–491. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0926-6410(98)00048-2
Wong, H. K., Stephen, I. D., & Keeble, D. R. T. (2020). The Own-Race Bias for Face Recognition in a Multiracial Society. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 208. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00208
Wrege, J. S., Ruocco, A. C., Carcone, D., Lang, U. E., Lee, A. C. H., & Walter, M. (2021). Facial Emotion Perception in Borderline Personality Disorder: Differential Neural Activation to Ambiguous and Threatening Expressions and Links to Impairments in Self and Interpersonal Functioning. Journal of Affective Disorders, 284, 126–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.01.042
Zhang, B., Shen, C., Zhu, Q., Ma, G., & Wang, W. (2016). Processing of facial expressions of emotions in Antisocial, Narcissistic, and Schizotypal personality disorders: An event-related potential study. Personality and Individual Differences, 99, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2016.04.066
Reaction Time Instrument for Depression
Executable file
Rationale and Discussion
My professor designed this task as an example of negativity bias in individuals with depression. Negativity bias is associated with certain symptoms of depression (Beevers et al., 2020). It’s a great task, and the code is a great reference for future codes.
Citations and Further Reading
Boxell, O. (2025). Neuropsychological Deep Structure: The Electromagnetic Emergence ofHuman Nature, Psychopathology, and the Scope of Clinical Mental HealthIntervention. ProQuest Global.
Beevers, C. G., Mullarkey, M. C., Dainer-Best, J., Stewart, R. A., Labrada, J., Allen, J. J. B., McGeary, J. E., & Shumake, J. (2019). Association between negative cognitive bias and depression: A symptom-level approach. Journal of abnormal psychology, 128(3), 212–227. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000405
Flanker
Executable files
Rationale and Discussion
Dillon and colleagues (2015) investigated 100 subjects with MDD and 40 control subjects. They found that subjects with MDD were, on average, more accurate with incongruent (80% vs 76%) and were, on average, 30 milliseconds slower.
This was found to be significant in the study; however, the clusters remain very close together.
Li and colleagues (2024) found that individuals with schizophrenia showed greater flanker interference.
Overall, the flanker task shows little sensitivity and specificity across different psychopathologies. However, the task is a psychological classic and can be used as a distractor or as a second task in other research.
Citations and Further Reading
Dillon, D. G., Wiecki, T., Pechtel, P., Webb, C., Goer, F., Murray, L., Trivedi, M., Fava, M., McGrath, P. J., Weissman, M., Parsey, R., Kurian, B., Adams, P., Carmody, T., Weyandt, S., Shores-Wilson, K., Toups, M., McInnis, M., Oquendo, M. A., Cusin, C., … Pizzagalli, D. A. (2015). A computational analysis of flanker interference in depression. Psychological medicine, 45(11), 2333–2344. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291715000276
Li, Q., Xu, H., Ren, Q., He, S., Hu, K., & Li, C.-S. R. (2024). Schizophrenia patients show impaired bottom-up processing and attentional adjustment. Current Psychology: A Journal for Diverse Perspectives on Diverse Psychological Issues, 43(16), 14324–14334. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-023-05355-w
Navon Task
Executable files
Rationale and Discussion
De Fockert and Cooper (2014) is one excellent article that shows what I want to research one day. Their experiment had two condition groups, one with individuals with more severe self-reports of depression and the other with individuals with milder self-reports of depression. Individuals with higher self-reports of depression were slower at responding to the global Navon conditions when compared to the other group. This is in line with Frederickson’s Broaden and Build Theory (2004). I liked this because it reminds me of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs (1943), but with cognition and actual quantifiable information. As such, I want to create this task for this website.
Citations and Further Reading
de Fockert, J. W., & Cooper, A. (2014). Higher levels of depression are associated with reduced global bias in visual processing. Cognition & emotion, 28(3), 541–549. https://doi.org/10.1080/02699931.2013.839939
Fredrickson B. L. (2004). The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 359(1449), 1367–1378. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2004.1512
Maslow, A. H. (1943). A theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0054346
Libido Lexical Decision Tasks
Executable files
CItations and Further Reading
Cacioppo, S. (2022) Wired For Love. Flat Iron Books.
Ortigue, S., Bianchi-Demicheli, F., Hamilton, A. F., & Grafton, S. T. (2007). The neural basis of love as a subliminal prime: an event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging study. Journal of cognitive neuroscience, 19(7), 1218–1230. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2007.19.7.1218
Rationale and Discussion
Libido Lexical Decision Task Priming Tasks. These tasks require some explanations. This task came from Dr. Stephanie Cacioppo’s early research (Ortigue et al., 2008), in which she would show two names: one with emotional significance (the name of a partner or spouse) and one control name. She then had the subjects perform a lexical decision task and found that they responded faster to the first condition. I first read about this study in the book Wired For Love (2022), which I highly recommend. I developed files that can easily mimic this task.
I wonder if attractiveness also influenced reaction time for a slightly more generalizable task. Although there are differences in individual opinions on what is attractive and cultural beauty standards, these tasks are probably not overly generalizable. To counteract this, the code must select from a random PNG of an attractive person. To keep file sizes low, I will need to create two separate files: one for male attraction and one for female attraction.
Wisconsin Card Sorting Like Tasks
Rationale and Discussion
The Wisconsin Card Sorting Task is an elegant way to assess problem-solving and cognition. It asks the participant to sort cards into different categories based on a hidden rule that changes frequently. This task was made by Berg (1948) and is still used today.
There’s a lot of interesting research on this task, and here are just a few of the studies I love. Goodkind and colleagues (2016) showed that performance improved after cognitive behavioral therapy in individuals with late-life depression. The task can even predict vaccine hesitancy (Pellegrini et al., 2024).
The Wisconsin Card Sorting Task is copyrighted, and as such, this is just inspired by it and uses similar rule-switching to measure cognitive performance and executive function. This task reports total errors, perseveration errors, and categories completed.
The Trial Category Sort Task is a modified version of the task where you have 20 trials of a typical category sort task but with 10 subtrials allocated to figure out the rule. This records the average number of subtrials used to determine the rule, the accuracy of each trial, and the rules mastered. This has yet to be normed and validated so be weary of that.
Citations and Further Reading
Berg, E.A. (1948). Journal of Experimental Psychology, 38, 404-411. A simple objective technique for measuring flexibility in thinking. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 39, 15-22.
Choi, J., & Kurtz, M. M. (2009). A comparison of remediation techniques on the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia research, 107(1), 76–82. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2008.09.017
Faustino, B., Oliveira, J., & Lopes, P. (2021). Diagnostic precision of the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test in assessing cognitive deficits in substance use disorders. Applied neuropsychology. Adult, 28(2), 165–172. https://doi.org/10.1080/23279095.2019.1607737
Goodkind, M. S., Gallagher-Thompson, D., Thompson, L. W., Kesler, S. R., Anker, L., Flournoy, J., Berman, M. P., Holland, J. M., & O'Hara, R. M. (2016). The impact of executive function on response to cognitive behavioral therapy in late-life depression. International journal of geriatric psychiatry, 31(4), 334–339. https://doi.org/10.1002/gps.4325
Jenkins, R. L., & Parsons, O. A. (1979). Recovery of cognitive abilities in male alcoholics. Currents in alcoholism, 7, 229–237.
Pellegrini, L., Clarke, A., Fineberg, N. A., & Laws, K. R. (2024). The inflexible mind: A critical factor in understanding and addressing COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. Journal of psychiatric research, 179, 360–365. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2024.09.028
Bias Related Tasks
Citations and Further Reading
Charlesworth, T. E. S., & Banaji, M. R. (2022). Patterns of Implicit and Explicit Attitudes: IV. Change and Stability From 2007 to 2020. Psychological science, 33(9), 1347–1371. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976221084257
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. K. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74(6), 1464–1480. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.74.6.1464
Wong, H. K., Stephen, I. D., & Keeble, D. R. T. (2020). The Own-Race Bias for Face Recognition in a Multiracial Society. Frontiers in psychology, 11, 208. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00208
Rationale and Discussion
Harvard’s Implicit Association Task (Greenwald et al., 1998) is one of the most influential cognitive tasks. It’s a useful tool that shows various implicit attitudes. It’s commonly used for race, gender, and sexuality, but it can be used for literally anything. The purpose of the task is not to demonstrate that everyone is bigoted, but to show that everyone has implicit attitudes and to understand how they manifest in behavior.
I’ve included articles that discuss the stability of the IAT and the generalized results (Charlesworth & Banaji., 2022) and an article discussing the “Own Race-Bias” (Wong et al., 2020).
N-backs
Rationale and Discussion
The N-back is a cognitive task that measures short-term memory. Individuals are shown a series of stimuli and are asked to identify if they saw the stimulus “n numbers ago”. N is a variable that ranges anywhere from 2 to 9. Haung and colleagues (2025) discuss its various uses.
It would be fascinating to use the n-back to investigate short-term memory in relation to traumatic experiences. If you used terms that were relevant to the traumatic event they experienced, record accuracy, reaction time, and perhaps an ERN and a Galvanic skin response. You can measure it before intervention, during treatment, and after treatment to see if this is a suitable measurement of treatment for PTSD and acute stress disorder.
It would be interesting to investigate short-term emotionally salient memory with ASPD using similar measurements from above.
Citations and Further Research
Huang, S., Chen, C., Mo, Y., Zhao, Y., Zhu, Y., Dong, K., & Xu, T. (2025). Exploring the n-back task: insights, applications, and future directions. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 19, 1721330. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2025.1721330
Iowa Gambling Task
Rationale and Discussion
The Iowa Gambling Task is a measure of risky behavior. This was developed by Dr. Antione Bechara (Bechara et al., 1994) while he was a PhD student under Dr. Antonio Damasio, who is one of my favorite authors. His book, Descartes’ Error (1994), inspired me to establish this website as a resource. The main argument in the book is that emotions and cognitions are inherently intertwined and inseparable. Damasio discusses Phineas Gage in detail as a prime example, and Bechara developed the Iowa Gambling Task to demonstrate riskier behavior in individuals with brain damage localized to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. They found that individuals with brain damage would choose the riskier decks (paying out more but also incurring higher losses) more often than the safer decks.
In terms of psychopathology, Miranda and colleagues (2009) found an interaction between ASPD and AUD in adult men, where the individuals with AUD (with or without comorbid ASPD) performed worse on the IGT. Must and colleagues (2013) also report that individuals with MDD will choose the riskier conditions. Suggesting this task has poor specificity but decent sensitivity for multiple psychopathologies.
I created an executable that randomizes the decks. Usually, the riskier decks are A and B, but now the decks are randomized each time you open the task. This makes it so that people will always have to relearn the task and the rules whenever they perform the task.
Citations and Further Reading
Bechara, A., Damasio A.R., Damasio H., Anderson S.W. (1994). Insensitivity to future consequences following damage to human prefrontal cortex. Cognition, 50, 7-15.
Miranda, R., Jr, MacKillop, J., Meyerson, L. A., Justus, A., & Lovallo, W. R. (2009). Influence of antisocial and psychopathic traits on decision-making biases in alcoholics. Alcoholism, clinical and experimental research, 33(5), 817–825. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-0277.2009.00901.x
Must, A., Horvath, S., Nemeth, V. L., & Janka, Z. (2013). The Iowa Gambling Task in depression - what have we learned about sub-optimal decision-making strategies?. Frontiers in psychology, 4, 732. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00732
Search Task
Rationale and Discussion
The Visual Search Task asks participants to find a single T in a sea of Ls. It is used to assess brain damage (Nakajima et al., 2024; Saionz et al., 2021; Walsh & Liu, 2014). I designed a task that can help localize occipital lobe damage by separating the results into different quadrants; damage to Visual area 1 can be partially assessed by dividing the field of view into quadrants.
In terms of psychological assessment, individuals with schizophrenia show a slower reaction time in a visual search task (Gold et al., 2007). Other research shows that one common factor in schizophrenia is deficits in visual processing. One lab that I interned at focused on investigating visual perception and schizophrenia, and they found that individuals with schizophrenia took longer to respond to illusory shapes (Keane et al., 2023). Combining these into a task that requires an individual to spot illusions would be fascinating to read.
Buhl and colleagues (2023) demonstrated an effect size of d=.06 between children with MDD and children with low risk of depression in an emotionally salient search task. This demonstrates a similar negative attention bias to that suggested by Beevers and colleagues (2019).
Citations and Further Reading
Beevers, C. G., Mullarkey, M. C., Dainer-Best, J., Stewart, R. A., Labrada, J., Allen, J. J. B., McGeary, J. E., & Shumake, J. (2019). Association between negative cognitive bias and depression: A symptom-level approach. Journal of abnormal psychology, 128(3), 212–227. https://doi.org/10.1037/abn0000405
Buhl, C., Sfärlea, A., Loechner, J., Starman-Wöhrle, K., Salemink, E., Schulte-Körne, G., & Platt, B. (2023). Biased Maintenance of Attention on Sad Faces in Clinically Depressed Youth: An Eye-Tracking Study. Child psychiatry and human development, 54(1), 189–201. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10578-021-01229-z
Gold, J. M., Fuller, R. L., Robinson, B. M., Braun, E. L., & Luck, S. J. (2007). Impaired top-down control of visual search in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia research, 94(1-3), 148–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2007.04.023
Nakajima, Y., Takahashi, N., Kawabata, K., Fujita, K., Shiomi, K., Sato, M., Omata, N., & Kobayashi, Y. (2024). Characteristics of Visual Cognition in Patients with Anoxic Encephalopathy: An Eye-tracking Study. Progress in rehabilitation medicine, 9, 20240024. https://doi.org/10.2490/prm.20240024
Saionz, E. L., Feldon, S. E., & Huxlin, K. R. (2021). Rehabilitation of cortically induced visual field loss. Current opinion in neurology, 34(1), 67–74. https://doi.org/10.1097/WCO.0000000000000884
Walsh, D. V., & Liu, L. (2014). Adaptation to a simulated central scotoma during visual search training. Vision research, 96, 75–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2014.01.005
Go/No Go
Rationale and Discussion
The Go/No Go Task is similar to the Stroop task, as both measure inhibition and impulsivity without the interference effect seen in the Stroop task. In this task, individuals are shown symbols and are told to respond to the specific go stimuli. Participants can press a myriad of buttons to respond to the stimulus. When it is a stop stimulus, they are told not to press anything.
The Go/No Go Task has been shown to demonstrate differences across psychopathologies such as ADHD (Wallace et al., 2023), Antisocial Personality Disorder (Verona et al., 2012), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (Chen et al., 2025), in both behavioral results and neuroimaging. Wallace and colleagues also found that screen time mediated symptoms of ADHD through impulsivity and working memory using the Go/NoGo Task.
There are many paradigms that can be implemented using the Go/NoGo Task. I created one where people have to focus on either the color or the words.
Citations and Further Reading
Chen, C. A., Lin, P. T., Hsu, M. Y., Lee, C. Y., Chen, I. M., Lin, Y. T., Huang, Y. J., Chen, P. H., Chen, J. J., Lin, G. H., & Huang, Y. J. (2025). Hypoactivity of the Prefrontal Cortex During Go/No-Go Task in Patients With Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Depression and anxiety, 2025, 9040115. https://doi.org/10.1155/da/9040115
Verona, E., Sprague, J., & Sadeh, N. (2012). Inhibitory control and negative emotional processing in psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder. Journal of abnormal psychology, 121(2), 498–510. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025308
Wallace, J., Boers, E., Ouellet, J., Afzali, M. H., & Conrod, P. (2023). Screen time, impulsivity, neuropsychological functions and their relationship to growth in adolescent attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder symptoms. Scientific reports, 13(1), 18108. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-44105-7
Dot Probe Tasks
Rationale and Discussion
The Dot Probe Task (MacLeod et al., 1986) is a method of measuring attention. This original article researched attentional biases in individuals with anxiety. In line with Broadbent (1958) and other attention researchers (Posner, 1980; Treisman & Gelade, 1980), attention is not about processing everything in our view, but about focusing on what is relevant to our goals and thought processes. In this task, people are shown two things between a fixation cross for a couple of hundred milliseconds. Then the cross and the words/image disappear, and a dot appears. Participants will have to press the corresponding button to select which side the dot appeared on.
The words/images can be anything. I created some where there are words with neutral and negative connotations, drug conditions, and trauma-related words, as well as image conditions with attractive celebrities/models and a neutral and scary face conditions.
Research has shown that depression (Trapp et al., 2018), Substance use disorders (Robbins & Ehrman, 2004), PTSD (Veerapa et al., 2023; Kaiser et al., 2020), and borderline personality disorder (Vestergaard et al., 2020; Kaiser et al., 2020). What is fascinating is that Vestergaard and colleagues (2020) and Kaiser and colleagues (2020) found similar results to those of Wrege and colleagues (2021) with the FERT. Suggesting that there are multiple ways of measuring emotional processing and that worse emotional processing in individuals with BPD is prevalent.
Veerapa and colleagues (2023) did not find any reaction time differences but did find eye-gaze differences towards negative stimuli. Eye Gaze research is an incredible new method for measuring attentional bias.
Citations and Further Reading
Kaiser, D., Jacob, G. A., van Zutphen, L., Siep, N., Sprenger, A., Tuschen-Caffier, B., Senft, A., Arntz, A., & Domes, G. (2020). Patients with borderline personality disorder and comorbid PTSD show biased attention for threat in the facial dot-probe task. Journal of behavior therapy and experimental psychiatry, 67, 101437. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbtep.2018.11.005
MacLeod, C., Mathews, A., & Tata, P. (1986). Attentional bias in emotional disorders. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(1), 15–20. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.95.1.15
Robbins, S. J., & Ehrman, R. N. (2004). The role of attentional bias in substance abuse. Behavioral and cognitive neuroscience reviews, 3(4), 243–260. https://doi.org/10.1177/1534582305275423
Trapp, W., Kalzendorf, C., Baum, C., Hajak, G., & Lautenbacher, S. (2018). Attentional biases in patients suffering from unipolar depression: results of a dot probe task investigation. Psychiatry research, 261, 325–331. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2018.01.005
Veerapa, E., Grandgenevre, P., Vaiva, G., Duhem, S., Fayoumi, M. E., Vinnac, B., Szaffarczyk, S., Wathelet, M., Fovet, T., & D'Hondt, F. (2023). Attentional bias toward negative stimuli in PTSD: an eye-tracking study. Psychological medicine, 53(12), 5809–5817. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291722003063
Vestergaard, M., Kongerslev, M. T., Thomsen, M. S., Mathiesen, B. B., Harmer, C. J., Simonsen, E., & Miskowiak, K. W. (2020). Women With Borderline Personality Disorder Show Reduced Identification of Emotional Facial Expressions and a Heightened Negativity Bias. Journal of personality disorders, 34(5), 677–698. https://doi.org/10.1521/pedi_2019_33_409
Deary-Liewald Task
Rationale and Discussion
The Deary-Liewald Task was designed for ease of access as a measure of crystallized intelligence (2011) and was validated against the Matrix Reasoning Task and the Wechsler Test of Adult Reading (WTAR).
The rules are simple: you have to press a key that corresponds to a square on the screen. Oftentimes, this is done with the keyboard. The ones I set up were designed around a similar modified number pad that was the basis for the rest of the tasks on this website.
Citations and Further Reading
Deary, I. J., Liewald, D., & Nissan, J. (2011). A free, easy-to-use, computer-based, simple, and four-choice reaction time program: the Deary-Liewald reaction time task. Behavior research methods, 43(1), 258–268. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13428-010-0024-1
Tower Problem Tasks
Rationale and Discussion
The Tower of Hanoi is a cognitive game that measures executive functioning and asks the participant to move all 3 rings (sometimes more, but this demonstration has 3 rings) from the first pole to the last pole. The catch is that you cannot stack the larger rings on the smaller rings. The task here records time and turns taken.
I also included the Tower of London task, which is similar and asks the participant to reorganize the tower to match the shown solution. Kavanaugh and colleagues (2025) demonstrate that results of the Tower of London correlates with neuropsychiatric disorders in children. This is a more diverse task; you can set up multiple trials, but this is only one. The Python scripts for these are available on my GitHub.
The research indicates that performance on the Tower of Hanoi correlates with Prenatal Cocaine exposure (Karpova et al, 2021), particularly in males who had prenatal cocaine exposure, which suggests environmental confounds.
Treatment responses also correlated with treatment of depression; using esketamine and ECT was found to be more effective in reducing symptoms of depression, as measured with the Hamilton Depression Scale, Wisconsin Card Sorting Task, and, of course, the Tower of Hanoi (Zhao et al., 2025). This article was interesting, as both treatment groups showed improvement with ECT, with slightly greater improvement in the combined treatment group.
Citations and Further Reading
Kavanaugh, B. C., Legere, C., Vigne, M., Holler, K., & Spirito, A. (2025). The Tower of London task in children and adolescents with neuropsychiatric disorders. Child neuropsychology : a journal on normal and abnormal development in childhood and adolescence, 31(2), 239–254. https://doi.org/10.1080/09297049.2024.2360224
Karpova, N., Zhang, D., Beckwith, A. M., Bennett, D. S., & Lewis, M. (2021). Prenatal drug exposure and executive function in early adolescence. Neurotoxicology and teratology, 88, 107036. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ntt.2021.107036
Zhao, G. G., Zhao, J., Kong, Y., Pang, Y. P., Zheng, X. N., & Zhang, Y. W. (2025). Effect of esketamine and etomidate anesthesia on neuroplasticity in electroconvulsive therapy for treatment-resistant depression. World journal of psychiatry, 15(9), 109458. https://doi.org/10.5498/wjp.v15.i9.109458
Trail Making Tasks
Rationale and Discussion
This task is commonly used to assess TBI and neurological deficits. As such, research on the impact of mental health on task performance is limited. The task asks you to connect all circles in order but the order involves both numbers and letter. Usually the first trials are with numbera alone and one with letters alone are done to train.
Citations and Further Reading
Martel, M. M., Roberts, B., Gremillion, M., von Eye, A., & Nigg, J. T. (2011). External validation of bifactor model of ADHD: explaining heterogeneity in psychiatric comorbidity, cognitive control, and personality trait profiles within DSM-IV ADHD. Journal of abnormal child psychology, 39(8), 1111–1123. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-011-9538-y
Zhu, C., Kwok, N. T., Chan, T. C., Chan, G. H., & So, S. H. (2021). Inflexibility in Reasoning: Comparisons of Cognitive Flexibility, Explanatory Flexibility, and Belief Flexibility Between Schizophrenia and Major Depressive Disorder. Frontiers in psychiatry, 11, 609569. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2020.609569
Short Term Memory Games
Rationale and Discussion
These tasks are games that measure short-term memory. One is the standard card flip game, where you flip cards over and have to remember where they were to solve it. And a pattern game that asks you to repeat the pattern given. This pattern is consistent across trials, so you can test long-term memory as well.
Kushwaha and colleagues (2024) performed a review and found that diagnoses like Schizophrenia, mood disorders, anxiety, PTSD, and substance use impact different memory domains.
Citations and Further Reading
Kushwaha, A., Basera, D. S., Kumari, S., Sutar, R. F., Singh, V., Das, S., & Agrawal, A. (2024). Assessment of memory deficits in psychiatric disorders: A systematic literature review. Journal of neurosciences in rural practice, 15(2), 182–193. https://doi.org/10.25259/JNRP_456_2023
Simon Tasks
Executables
Coming Soon
Rationale and Discussion
This is where the Simon Tasks are held. They focus on spatial reasoning.
Citations and Further Reading
Coming Soon
About The Page Designer, Ty DiPonzio
Ty DiPonzio is a Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling Student at the University of Rochester. His career aspirations are to work as a Forensic Psychologist, Psychotherapist, and Adjunct Faculty Professor. His research interests are centered on Cognitive Performance across psychological tasks in different psychopathologies and on how these tasks can be used to measure and assess diagnoses, track improvement, predict treatment response, and predict future behavior relevant to Forensic Psychology examinations.
Ty graduated Cum Laude from The State University of New York at Geneseo. He joined both Psi Chi and Nu Rho Psi, honor societies for Psychology and Neuroscience, respectively. Ty worked as a Teaching Assistant for an introductory neuroscience class and was an active member of a developmental psychology lab. Because of his contributions to the Geneseo Psychology Department through events and charity drives, he was awarded the Outstanding Student Leadership Award in his senior year.
Ty is currently a Research Assistant for the Deep Structure in New York Lab (DeStiNY Lab). Here, he has worked on literature reviews, provided peer-review feedback, designed and developed projects, and is currently collecting data for a research project for his Master's Thesis. He also joined Chi Sigma Iota, the Counseling Honor Society.
After Ty earns his Master’s Degree, he plans to pursue a PhD in Counseling Psychology, Clinical Psychology, or Psychology and Law to provide expert testimony as a Board Certified Forensic Psychologist and to practice as a psychotherapist. Ty hopes to continue research in the merit of cognitive tasks in psychotherapy, particularly in the domains of memory, executive function, inhibition, and impulsivity, and how they relate to personality disorders, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, and substance use disorders. Ty also wants to investigate whether these tasks meet the Daubert Standard in US courts, so they can help bolster evidence and civil rights for the accused and provide in-depth psychological evidence for parole and similar evaluations.
Ty is an avid reader with his favorite authors being Dr. Oliver Sacks, Dr. David Nutt, Dr. David Eagleman, Antonio Damasio, Kurt Vonnegut, Will Eisner, George Orwell, Alan Moore, and Aldous Huxley.
To learn more about Ty, you can click here to view his LinkedIn.