[ryanwhitney]

They include some clinical research info at the end of the usage instructions PDF[0].

One says results were not statistically significant and the other has a warning that it may be placebo effect since they didn’t have a “sham control group”.

(I don't have enough stats knowledge to know what any of this actually means though.)

0: https://www.endeavorrx.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/Endeav... (pdf)

[odo1242]

As a person who did study statistics, they found absolutely nothing useful, for the most part, if what you say is correct.

(Basically, everything they found can be attributed to random chance, and there’s no proof their game is anything special compared to other games)

[ProjectArcturis]

Did we read the same thing? "The primary endpoint was achieved, mean change from baseline on the TOVA API was 0.93 in the EndeavorRx group versus 0.03 in the control group (p=0.006). "

[diob]

I couldn't find anything incredibly definitive on TOVA, but based on https://www.queensu.ca/rarc/sites/rarcwww/files/uploaded_fil... it does seem incredibly useless / statistically insignificant.

[romwell]

From their own description, it has absolutely nothing to do with ADHD.

As in: there's not even a claim it correlates with how strongly people experience ADHD symptoms.

[romwell]

I'm sorry, but have you looked at the TOVA API[1]?

I have.

Put simply, it's bullshit — and one that doesn't even purport to measure ADHD (which, indeed, is not something one could measure on a linear scale).

It has nothing to do with how we experience ADHD symptoms and traits.

It does, however, look like something one could train for by... playing videogames.

Surprise, playing videogames makes one statistically better at videogames! Now pay me.

Disclaimer: I have ADHD, and have written a small wiki about it, which quite a few folks with ADHD have found useful:

https://romankogan.net/adhd

The same remains to be said of the product we're discussing.

[1] https://tovatest.com/how-tova-works/

[viraptor]

You created that one? Thank you, it's amazing and painfully true.

[romwell]

Yup, made it when I was just learning about ADHD while figuring out how many traits are applicable to me.

100+ pages in, I figured it's time to get myself assessed [1].

Went through the assessment three times with different doctors just to be sure; unsurprisingly, they all had the same conclusion.

Life has been so much simpler since then. Adderall is a great asset to have in the toolbox, but probably 90% of life quality improvement came from stopping to expect my brain to work the same way a neurotypical brain does, and adjusting my environment / lifestyle / habits / the way I do things to how my brain works, rather than the other way around.

That ranges from little things like having a pair of scissors at all desks and places where I use them (instead of perpetually looking for them) and trusting my partner's time estimates over my brain's — to bigger things like using body doubling[2] to get things done.

On that note, the online body doubling community ADHD Actually[3] has provided a very strong effect when I needed it the most (e.g. chugging through a less-exciting work project), and I can highly recommend it.

I'm paying for it even when I'm not using it just because this needs to exist.

It's made for and by people who understand our experience, and is based on time-proven techniques that all the therapists recommend for ADHD people.

Technically, one doesn't need an online platform for that; we've organized similar sessions with friends on Zoom... But in practice, the accountability aspect is much harder to maintain (...as well as getting people to show up consistently and at the same time as you).

ADHD Actually solves this problem; and paying a small fee also adds extra motivation to make use of the service and show up.

And the impartiality of people in the group is a big plus.

[1] https://romankogan.net/adhd#Diagnosis

[2] https://romankogan.net/adhd#Body%20Double

[3] https://adhdactually.com

[ProjectArcturis]

In their largest study, they found that 4 weeks of treatment improved ADHD scores by 1 standard deviation, and this was highly significant. That's the equivalent of going from the 5th percentile to the 35th - definitely a meaningful improvement.

[romwell]

What "ADHD scores" are we talking about?

There's no such thing as the "ADHD score".

[latentsea]

Did they measure it in "how much you get yelled at"? That's my yardstick for how bad my symptoms are in any given week.