

Test Your Focus - kingkawn
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/06/07/technology/20100607-distraction-filtering-demo.html

======
logic
Maybe it's just me, but this feels like a poorly-constructed test.

My own approach was to simply ignore anything blue; since my browser window is
blue-framed, the Times background is black and white, and the UI elements are
all blue, I simply blurred my vision and made note of the items that visually
jumped out at me. I certainly didn't keep any of the blue items "in memory"; I
only noted and remembered the two visually-distinctive ones.

I'm sure there's some kind of science behind this, but I feel like I just
participated in a cheap parlor game.

 _Edit:_ Just to clarify, I scored 2/2, so this isn't just sour grapes about
not getting a good score. ;)

~~~
logic
The "juggling tasks" test proved to be significantly more interesting; it
certainly didn't feel as though the UI had as much of an impact on what my
brain was working on (which, presumably, was the goal).

------
JacobAldridge
Did anyone else wonder if they were supposed to be looking for the moonwalking
bear? <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTv4yD6BKlA>

~~~
cstuder
Yeah, I almost lost focus during this test thinking about the bear.

------
gizmo
I think this is a bad test because I lost focus half way through and still
scored 100%. The first few were tricky, because you're not yet "wired" to only
see the red ones. Then it gets easy, and after 10 or so you get bored. This is
when you should be making mistakes.

Unfortunately, humans have extraordinary peripheral vision so even if you do
tasks that destroy your concentration (in my case: selecting some tracks on
spotify and reading the subject of a "new email bubble") you will still be
able to sense whether the red bars rotated.

To really test concentration you should have some kind of continuous stream of
information, so that you lose count the moment your mind drifts. That would
probably give much better data. Then you can measure the average time before
people lose concentration, and so forth.

------
Splines
I had a hard time with the letter/number one, since to me, vowels seem even,
while consonants seem odd, while the pairing in the test was the opposite. I
kept wanting to click on the wrong side, even though I correctly identified
the object.

I did only get one wrong (and knew it the second I clicked), but I think I
could have done it faster without the extra mental processing to override my
urge to click on the wrong spot.

------
donohoe
me = good focus + bad multitasker

<http://twitpic.com/1urx6m>

~~~
gxti
OK, so who _didn't_ get 100%?

------
houseabsolute
It's hard to imagine any group of people that would fair to get a perfect
score on this test within some small margin of error.

------
iworkforthem
I only managed a 92% with > 6 blue rectangle = I can do tasks with around 2
distractions. And when the distraction increases to 6, my performance
decrease. NEVER MULTITASK from onwards, I figured if I can complete one task
at a time, at the end of the day I will be able to complete quite a handful of
tasks.

