What Is the Flanker Test?
The Flanker Test asks you to identify the direction of a central arrow while ignoring four arrows beside it. All five arrows appear together, but only the middle arrow determines the correct answer. The challenge is to respond accurately even when the neighboring arrows point in a distracting direction.
On some trials, all arrows point the same way. These are matching (also called congruent) trials. On others, the surrounding arrows point in the opposite direction from the center. These are conflicting (incongruent) trials. Comparing your responses to the two patterns gives the task its distinctive measure of interference.
ReflexBenchmark's online Flanker practice test records correct choices, wrong choices, missed responses and browser-measured response times. It is a short, self-guided task for exploring selective attention and response control in one session. It is not a standardized diagnostic or clinical evaluation.
How to Take the Online Flanker Attention Test
- Read the rule before starting: respond to the center arrow only, not the arrows on either side.
- Select Start Test. After a short waiting interval, five arrows appear on screen.
- Press the Left or Right keyboard arrow key, or tap the corresponding on-screen button.
- Answer within the three-second response window. An unanswered trial is recorded as missed.
- Continue through 40 trials. When the session ends, review your score, median times, interference difference and real trial chart.
The task contains exactly 20 matching and 20 conflicting trials. For balance, each combination of pattern type and center-arrow direction appears ten times. Their order is shuffled when a new attempt starts. You will see brief feedback after each response before the next pattern appears.
You do not need to memorize a symbol key or calculate anything while playing. Instead, keep your attention on the center position and choose the direction you see. If you switch away from the browser tab during an active attempt, the game interrupts the run and requires a restart. An incomplete run is not submitted as a finished score.
Matching and Conflicting Arrows Explained
In a matching trial such as → → → → →, all arrows agree, so the surrounding arrows reinforce the center direction. In a conflicting trial such as ← ← → ← ←, the correct response is still Right, because the central arrow points right even though its neighbors point left.
These two conditions let you compare performance when nearby visual information supports the target versus when it competes with the target. Conflict does not change the game's answer rule. A left-pointing center remains a left response in either condition, and a right-pointing center remains a right response.
One useful habit is to look directly at the middle arrow rather than reading the entire row as one shape. Respond only once for each pattern. Fast guesses based on the outer arrows can increase errors, and waiting too long can result in a missed response when the three-second window closes.
How the Flanker Score and Accuracy Are Calculated
Your primary score is the number of correct responses out of 40. A correct left/right choice earns one point. A wrong choice and a missed trial earn zero. The score can therefore range from 0 to 40. A faster correct response does not earn more points than a slower correct response; timing is reported separately.
Overall accuracy uses the formula correct responses ÷ 40 × 100, rounded to the nearest whole percent. The results also split correct answers into matching correct / 20 and conflicting correct / 20. The wrong and missed counters explain why the final correct total may be lower than 40.
Worked Scoring Example
Imagine a completed attempt with 18 correct matching trials and 15 correct conflicting trials. That gives you 33 correct responses. Suppose the remaining seven trials contain four wrong choices and three misses. All 40 trials are now accounted for: 33 + 4 + 3 = 40.
The main result is 33/40 correct. Your accuracy is 33 ÷ 40 × 100 = 82.5%, which the page displays as 83%. These are illustrative numbers explaining the calculation, not an average or a benchmark for other users.
Because the trial mix is fixed, you can also inspect whether most errors came from matching or conflicting arrows. For example, 18/20 on matching trials and 15/20 on conflicting trials suggests more difficulty with the latter pattern in that particular attempt. It does not establish a permanent ability level.
What the Flanker Interference Difference Means
The game reports median correct response time for matching and conflicting conditions separately. For each condition, it sorts the response times from correct answers and takes the middle value. When the count is even, it averages the two middle values. Wrong choices and missed trials are not included in these correct-response medians.
Its interference difference is calculated as median conflicting RT − median matching RT, in milliseconds. A positive number means correct conflicting trials had a slower median than correct matching trials in this run. A negative number means the reverse. Near-zero values mean the two medians were similar during the attempt.
Worked Interference Example
If your matching-trial median is 420 ms and your conflicting-trial median is 495 ms, the displayed difference is 495 − 420 = +75 ms. If the medians were reversed, the difference would be negative. These figures are sample calculations, not expected performance ranges.
If you have no correct responses in one of the two categories, there is no median for that category. The page then shows Not enough data rather than inventing an interference estimate.
A smaller or negative difference is not automatically a better test result. It might come from a few valid measurements, unusual trial-to-trial variation or a trade-off between speed and accuracy. Read the interference number together with how many answers were correct in each condition.
Reading the Five-Block Chart and Trial History
After the 40th trial, the result panel displays five bars, each summarizing eight consecutive trials. Block 1 covers trials 1–8, block 2 covers trials 9–16, and so on through trials 33–40. A bar labeled 6/8 means six of those eight responses were correct, regardless of whether the pattern was matching or conflicting.
These bars are based on your recorded choices, not a decorative animation or a predicted trend. Blocks may contain different mixes of matching and conflicting patterns because the trial order is shuffled, so do not treat bar height as a controlled difficulty comparison. The chart is best used to notice whether accuracy changed during the session.
The expandable 40-trial history gives a closer look. Each entry identifies the trial number, the matching/conflicting condition, correctness and the recorded time when a response was made. A missed trial appears without a reaction-time value. This breakdown lets you check whether a particular block's result came from wrong choices, timeouts or a mix of both.
If your attempt is saved successfully, the site may also show an estimated rank after enough comparable recorded attempts exist. That ranking is based on site attempts using the same test mode; it is not a representative population percentile or a clinical norm. A pending rank does not mean the score failed to save.
Practical Ways to Improve Consistency
- Focus on the center position. Keep your gaze near the target arrow instead of following the flanking arrows.
- Confirm direction before pressing. In this game, a correct response counts toward the main score even if it is not the fastest response of the session.
- Choose one input method. Use either keyboard arrows or on-screen buttons consistently when comparing your own runs.
- Practice the rule, not a guessed pattern. Matching and conflicting arrows are balanced, but their order is shuffled each time.
- Reduce competing distractions. Close unnecessary windows or notifications while you complete the 40 trials.
- Review both accuracy and time. A faster median that comes with more errors may not represent the kind of progress you intended.
- Leave space between attempts. If you feel distracted or tired, return later rather than repeatedly clicking through unfocused runs.
Familiarity with the controls and visual pattern can change performance from one attempt to another. To make personal comparisons more meaningful, try to keep your device, input method and test setting consistent. Even then, a short game is sensitive to normal variation in attention and response speed.
Device Accuracy and Limits of This Browser Test
This online Flanker Test relies on your browser for stimulus display and response timing. Monitor refresh behavior, operating-system scheduling, keyboard polling, touchscreen processing and browser workload can affect the recorded milliseconds. A three-second game deadline does not turn the measurement into calibrated laboratory timing.
The score-saving API validates the 40-entry history, the expected ten trials for each pattern/direction combination, the allowed response types and the reported correct-answer total. That improves internal consistency between a submitted score and its history. It cannot independently verify that a person completed the attempt unaided or prove that the device timing is exact.
Flanker tasks are used in research on attention and distracting information, but results depend on the exact stimulus format and administration rules. This version is a convenient online attention practice test, not an ADHD screening tool, medical diagnosis, IQ measurement or direct assessment of real-world driving or work performance.