Guides
What changes your reaction time
Your device, your age, your attention and the practice of the test itself all change your time. Repeating a test raises scores, partly because you learn the test (Scharfen et al., 2018a), and touchscreens alone add 50 to 200 ms (Van Patten et al., 2021).
The device
The biggest factor online is not you. Conventional touchscreens add 50 to 200 ms of latency (Van Patten et al., 2021), and across 59,587 online test takers, people on mobile devices, Android phones especially, were slower on reaction tests than people on computers (Passell et al., 2021). Changing phone can move your time more than years of age. Details in why reaction time is slower on a phone.
Age
In 1,469 adults aged 18 to 65, simple reaction time rose by about 0.55 ms per year (Woods et al., 2015a). The time needed to detect the signal, about 131 ms, did not change with age. The slowing came from starting the movement. Sex and education made no difference in that study.
Attention and the test itself
A reaction time test is short, and a moment of distraction costs a lot on one trial. This is why the reaction time test keeps the median of five trials, and why Headgame averages your sessions over a week. Averaging brief smartphone tests produced reliabilities of 0.97 or more in 219 adults (Sliwinski et al., 2018).
Practice matters too. Scores on repeated cognitive tests rise, partly because people learn the test (Scharfen et al., 2018a). A precise simple reaction time test, though, showed no significant learning effect across three weekly sessions (Woods et al., 2015b), so expect less change here than on memory tests.
What is not proven
Pages about reaction time often promise that a game, a food or a routine will make you faster in daily life. The largest review of brain training found extensive evidence that people get better at the trained task, less for closely related tasks, and little for distant tasks or everyday performance (Simons et al., 2016).
Sleep, caffeine and exercise are often mentioned too. We do not cover them here, because we have not yet reviewed primary sources on them, and we prefer to say nothing than to repeat a claim.
Sources
- Scharfen J., Peters J.M., Holling H. (2018). Retest effects in cognitive ability tests, a meta-analysis. Intelligence 67, 44 to 66. doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2018.01.003
- Van Patten R., Iverson G.L., Muzeau M.A., VanRavenhorst-Bell H.A. (2021). Test-retest reliability and reliable change estimates for four mobile cognitive tests administered virtually in community-dwelling adults. Frontiers in Psychology 12, 734947. PMC8566921. doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.734947
- Passell E., Strong R.W., Rutter L.A. et al. (2021). Cognitive test scores vary with choice of personal digital device. Behavior Research Methods 53(6), 2544 to 2557. PMC8568735. doi.org/10.3758/s13428-021-01597-3
- Woods D.L., Wyma J.M., Yund E.W., Herron T.J., Reed B. (2015). Factors influencing the latency of simple reaction time. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9, 131. doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00131
- Sliwinski M.J., Mogle J.A., Hyun J. et al. (2018). Reliability and validity of ambulatory cognitive assessments. Assessment 25(1), 14 to 30. PMC5690878. doi.org/10.1177/1073191116643164
- Woods D.L., Wyma J.M., Yund E.W., Herron T.J. (2015). The effects of repeated testing, simulated malingering, and traumatic brain injury on high-precision measures of simple visual reaction time. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9, 540. PMC4637414. doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2015.00540
- Simons D.J., Boot W.R., Charness N. et al. (2016). Do brain training programs work? Psychological Science in the Public Interest 17(3), 103 to 186. doi.org/10.1177/1529100616661983
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