Doing Two Things at Once
by Anonymous · ⭐ 1 · 🍴 0
It may feel like you’re doing two things at once, but you’re really switching quickly—and every switch takes time. 🎯 First, measure yourself: press whether each number is odd or even. Try eight rounds and you’ll see that each round takes a different amount of time, so we use the average from several rounds. 🔀 Next, mix it up. Add a second rule to the same task so «odd/even» and «size» take turns. Move the mixing handle to 0, 25, 50, or 100 and measure again—at 0, there’s no switching, so the difference disappears. ⏱️ Finally, find where the time went. Compare rounds with «switches» to rounds where you «kept going»: the slowdown comes from switching, not from knowing two rules. That difference is the time it takes to switch once. This app was made with code too · Remix it and measure our class’s results!
About this app
Doing Two Things at Once is an interactive reaction-time experiment about task switching. First, measure a baseline by identifying numbers as odd or even across eight turns, then compare performance when alternating between odd/even and size rules at different mixing levels. Results show averages, mistakes, baseline differences, and the separate times for switch turns versus stay turns.
Use cases
- Students exploring attention and multitasking
- Teachers demonstrating task-switching costs
- Learners practicing accurate reaction responses
- Classrooms collecting and comparing reaction-time rounds
Features
- Eight-turn odd/even reaction-time rounds
- Mixed odd/even and size rules
- Adjustable mixing levels of 0%, 25%, 50%, and 100%
- Averages based on correct responses across multiple rounds
- Filtering of responses that are too fast or too slow
- Breakdown of switch turns, stay turns, and estimated switching cost