Task switching · Learning
Task Switch Test
A digit appears under a rule that flips without warning — odd or even, low or high.
No IQ score. No cognitive age. No percentile we can’t source.
Cognitive flexibility · Learning
Task Switch
A digit lands under the points. The lever throws to ODD · EVEN or LOW · HIGH — and it changes without warning, so read the throw every time before you answer.
Your best switch cost · —
What this is. Your cognitive flexibility on this device — how nimbly you drop one rule and pick up the other. Not an intelligence test, and not a diagnosis.
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Keep going
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Free to play here. On Train, part of Core.
What this measures
This measures cognitive flexibility: how well you switch between two simple rules on the fly, and how much the switch slows you down.
Read the rule, answer fast, and see your switch cost: how much the change slows you down.
How to get better
You mostly get better at this task — holding both rules ready, reading the cue before you answer, and not carrying the last rule into the next trial. That is a real, honest thing to practise, and it is why the switch cost matters more than a single fast answer. It makes you quicker at changing rules on this screen.
Questions
- What is task switching?
- Task switching is holding two rules in mind and applying whichever one the moment calls for. Here one rule asks odd or even and the other asks low or high — below or above 5 — and the lever thrown above the digit tells you which to use. Because the rule changes unpredictably, the game measures how nimbly you can drop one rule and pick up the other.
- What is a switch cost?
- You are reliably a little slower on the trial right after the rule changes than on a trial where the rule stayed the same. That difference — your switch-trial median reaction minus your repeat-trial median — is your switch cost, and it is the honest signal this game reports. A smaller switch cost means you reconfigure faster.
- Why is the switch cost fairer than my raw reaction time?
- Your raw times include your device: a touchscreen and a browser both add lag. The switch cost subtracts your repeat-trial times from your switch-trial times, so that constant lag cancels out — what is left is the extra time the switch itself took. That is why we headline accuracy and switch cost rather than a raw millisecond number.
- What are the two modes?
- Baseline is the honest instrument: a few unscored warm-up trials, then a calm, fixed-pace run of mixed trials that gives you a clean accuracy and your switch cost. Cascade is the arcade run — the response window tightens and the gaps shrink as you land clean switches, and three slips end it, so you chase how many you can route. Because Cascade keeps changing pace, its reaction times are not a fair switch cost; Baseline is the one to read.
- Why is the digit never 5?
- Five is exactly in the middle, so 'low or high' would have no honest answer for it. Leaving it out keeps the magnitude rule unambiguous — every digit in play is clearly below or above five.