The half-second when you go blind
How often you spotted the X, by how soon it came after the pink letter. Most people dip between 200 and 500 ms, the "blink".
Play some streams to draw your curve. It fills in as you go.
A stream in slow motion
Each frame lasts a tenth of a second. Drag through this stream to see where the X lands relative to the pink letter, and why an X just one frame later often survives.
That odd early escape is called lag-1 sparing: the X slips through the door with the pink letter before it closes.
Why the X disappears
Your eyes register every letter. But turning a letter into something you can report takes a slower second step, and it handles one item at a time.
Seen, but not noticed
Brain recordings show the missed X was still processed, it just never reached awareness. Pick a region.
Jane Raymond, Kimron Shapiro and Karen Arnell showed a second target is often missed if it appears within about half a second of the first.
Raymond, Shapiro & Arnell, 1992After three months of intensive attention training, people spotted more second targets inside the blink window, attention became more efficient.
Slagter et al., 2007The half-second your attention goes blind
After you spot one target in a rapid stream, a second target arriving 200–500 ms later is often missed. This game measures that gap and trains you to catch both.
Three places this skill turns up
Each one leans on a different part of what the game trains.
More attention games
All 40 games →React where the cue points, unless it lies.
Judge which line was longer in a flash.
Tap only for X after A.
Find the odd item in a crowded field.