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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Quantitative Psychology and Measurement
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1502914
Developing a Therapeutic App Based on the Emotional Stroop Task for Objective Discovery of Daily Life Issues for People with ADHD
Provisionally accepted- 1 Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands
- 2 Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands
- 3 Human Technology Interaction, Eindhoven, Netherlands
Pinpointing the most urgent problem to start treatment on in therapy for people with ADHD is a subjective and time-consuming process. To improve this process, we designed a proof-of-concept for an application that can identify daily life issues that cause negative mental load. Through several modified emotional Stroop-tasks, we show that people with ADHD respond slower to negative emotions and daily life issues related to ADHD, compared to neurotypicals. Negative emotions and social issues were especially prevalent in the ADHD participants. The application highlighted two to five issues per participant. This could indicate that these topics cause the highest mental load in the participant, and need attention first from a therapist. Using this application in a therapeutic context could deliver a more objective, personalized, traceable and efficient therapy for daily-life issues in ADHD.
Keywords: ADHD, Emotional Stroop test, attentional control, emotional interference, Diagnostic measurement, daily life issues, therapy
Received: 27 Sep 2024; Accepted: 12 Feb 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Schoenmakers, Bos and IJsselsteijn. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Sanne Schoenmakers, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, Netherlands
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