All The Time You Need
Two questions about one digit. Switching between them costs you, and everyone explains it the same way: your brain has to put one task down and pick the other up. Then you get most of a second of warning, which is all the time that explanation needs. Watch what is left.
A digit appears. A word above it tells you which question to answer about it. Each question has two names, so four words in all, and they mean exactly two things.
Two keys, F and J, for everything. The digit 5 never appears. Both questions are easy on their own. The whole experiment is about what happens on the trials where the question changes, and about how much of that changes when you get advance warning.
Everybody knows switching costs you, and everybody explains it the same way: your brain has to put one task down and pick the other up. That is an operation, and operations can be done early. On half the blocks the word arrives 850 ms before the digit, which is all the time that explanation needs.
The gap between your answer and the next digit is 1150 ms in every block, short warning and long. Only the position of the word inside that gap moves, so the previous task is exactly as stale in both. That single constant is what makes the result mean anything.
- Two short key drills, a practice run, then 8 blocks of 44. About fourteen minutes.
- Answer fast and accurately. Both matter, and errors are dropped rather than punished.
- Stay on the tab. Time spent away is counted and can void the session.
- Everything is computed in your browser. Nothing is recorded, nothing is sent anywhere.