Focus and attention tests

Go/no-go, Stroop and flanker measure how well you hold back a movement or ignore a distraction. Of the three, go/no-go errors are the most reliable, 0.76 over repeated sessions (Hedge et al., 2018).

Go/no-go test Response inhibition Go/no-go 20 s Headgame norm being collected Stroop test Interference control Color 20 s Headgame norm being collected Flanker test Selective attention Flock 20 s Headgame norm being collected

Inhibition and selective attention

The go/no-go test asks you to answer one signal and hold back on another. It descends from the c reaction described by Donders in 1868 (Donders, 1868), and a meta-analysis of brain imaging studies links it to a frontal network involved in response inhibition (Simmonds et al., 2008).

The Stroop test asks you to name an ink colour while reading a word that names another colour, an effect described in 1935 (Stroop, 1935). The flanker test asks you to follow a central arrow while ignoring the ones next to it, a task from Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974 (Eriksen and Eriksen, 1974). Both measure how well you filter what you see.

Why only go/no-go counts in the card

A test can show a strong effect on average and still be a poor measure of one person. In a study of seven classic tasks, the Stroop cost reached a reliability of 0.60 and 0.66 and the flanker cost 0.40 and 0.57, while go/no-go commission errors reached 0.76 (Hedge et al., 2018). Headgame only puts in your card what stays stable from one week to the next.

A word on ADHD

These tests appear in attention research, and searches often pair them with ADHD. They do not diagnose anything. A diagnosis takes a clinical assessment by a professional, never a 20 second game.

Sources

  1. Hedge C., Powell G., Sumner P. (2018). The reliability paradox. Behavior Research Methods 50(3), 1166 to 1186. PMC5990556. doi.org/10.3758/s13428-017-0935-1
  2. Donders F.C. (1868, translated 1969). On the speed of mental processes. Acta Psychologica 30, 412 to 431. doi.org/10.1016/0001-6918(69)90065-1
  3. Simmonds D.J., Pekar J.J., Mostofsky S.H. (2008). Meta-analysis of Go/No-go tasks. Neuropsychologia 46(1), 224 to 232. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2007.07.015
  4. Stroop J.R. (1935). Studies of interference in serial verbal reactions. Journal of Experimental Psychology 18(6), 643 to 662. doi.org/10.1037/h0054651
  5. Eriksen B.A., Eriksen C.W. (1974). Effects of noise letters upon the identification of a target letter in a nonsearch task. Perception and Psychophysics 16, 143 to 149. doi.org/10.3758/BF03203267

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