Reflex tests

Reflex or reaction time

A doctor tapping your knee tests a reflex, an automatic loop that does not go through a decision. Nothing on this page measures that. These tests measure voluntary reaction time, the time between seeing a signal and choosing to move.

Measuring that time is one of the oldest methods in psychology. In 1868 Franciscus Donders compared simple reactions with reactions that require a choice to estimate how long a mental step takes (Donders, 1868). In 1952 William Hick showed that reaction time grows with the number of possible choices (Hick, 1952). The reaction time test is the simplest case, one signal and one answer.

What counts in the Reflexes stat

In the app, the Reflexes stat comes from the reaction time test and the Schulte table, played on alternating mornings. Each score becomes a percentile against its norm, then a stat from 35 to 99, averaged over your two best sessions of the week.

The F1 reaction test is a free game for now. It joins the stat only once its own reliability has been measured, because a test that is not stable from one week to the next would make your card move for no reason.

Sources

1. Human Benchmark, score distributions embedded in humanbenchmark.com, read on 13 October 2026. Reaction time n 70 940, sequence memory n 35 868, chimp test n 27 233, number memory n 24 084. humanbenchmark.com
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. Hick W.E. (1952). On the rate of gain of information. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 4(1), 11 to 26. doi.org/10.1080/17470215208416600