Attentional concentration test
The Attentional Concentration Test (ACT) is a quick check of how well you can focus and a rough measure of thinking ability.
How it works
- You see bars made of small squares. The bar may show a color pattern (for example, three red squares) or a dice-like pattern.
- Your job is to click only the target squares as fast as you can, with no mistakes.
- In the standard version there are 25 bars. After each bar, you press a button to see the next one.
- The time between bars is recorded, and after the test you get a graph of your reaction times.
Practice and taking the test
- You can practice as much as you want before the real test. Practice helps get more accurate results.
- In the actual test you can take it several times; the best result is the administration with the fastest reaction times across attempts.
Errors
- If you click a non-target square by mistake, you must restart the current attempt.
What it’s about
- The test is based on the idea that attention works in bursts: periods of focus and moments of distraction. This is described using rising and falling inhibitory processes.
Research connection
- Some studies have shown ACT results relate to reasoning abilities.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 16:21 (CET).