A visual working memory test

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Oh, I just remembered, I "missed the input" for 4 of them because apparently I was "too slow"; after realizing there was a gap in time that was becoming faster (Smaller) as the test progressed, I picked up the pace. So, that puts my score (not including the miskeys) at 57/60. Phewwww.... that psychosis research was worrying me a little bit. (Of course, maybe I am going psychotic and I just fabricated that memory to try to increase my 'real score' to allay my worries? Haha. It's possible...)

Oh well, I suppose I'll try this test again at the end of the month.

Glad you are feeling better.

Psychosis does run in my family, but I'm to old for this now.

One side of my family are/were "Off". They have passed the scene now. Paranoid schizophrenia is what they had. Maybe it's my cognitive bias at play here, but I've always felt "this something" stemmed from them, e.g. mother. grandmother, uncle. I'm certain I have at least ADD.

Other people have commented on this too.

I'd 'put a thousand down on it.'

I'm not rule oriented in any sense of the word, in fact I hate structure, and this is one thing that leads me to think that I might not have Asperg.

Folk here are comfortable using or appying the condition of "autistim" for themselves, but for me deep down it just doesn't click.

IDK.

I got no mistakes, average react time was like 433 ms if I'm not mistaken, my mental age was -40 or something. Weird, having in mind that I very much seem to have ADHD. But I never got problems with my working memory, at least most of the time, I think.

I got all correct, except I wasn't fast enough for one so ended up with 59/60 score.

My mental age was 38 ?? I'm guessing this has to do with the reaction time of 688ms

I think that there was likely some bad wiring from the get go (executive functioning issues), but I've learned to compensate by "running a loop" until I'm certain that "everything links up" as far as my decision, and the relation to how I respond with my hands.

I'd also like to note that it seems I've undergone quite a bit of therapy in this area from playing touchscreen games at the bar. When I started off I was horrible, but something "clicked" one day and I started excelling to the point that nobody can come close to my scores in most of the little games.

I first worked hard with pure visual spacial reasoning games involving touch response, then moved onto verbal games involving working memory with a touch response. I was horrible at each from the get go, but now excel in it all.

I have no clue if my "aspergers" is real or not, but am certain that I've had to rewire my brain more than once from trauma. The first time was after heavy drug use as a teenager, and that took a lot of work. The second time was after a car wreck when I needed the "jaws of life" to rip the door off my upside down truck in order to escape. The third time was after my little brother passed away 16 months later.

All I can say is that the brain is incredibly adaptive. If you suck at something, just keep working with it. Try to use brain regions (cognitive functions) that are working and force a relation to the task you're doing which you're not good at. It seems that if you do this long enough, you can rewire your brain and gain savant-like abilities in the process.

For instance, in that test, I would have scored HORRIBLE several years ago. I learned a few "tricks" that carried over from childhood skills. Like imagining a picture that relates to part of the pattern, and then chunking that while focusing on the remaining dots, and keeping their relation to each other together. You can also imagine a line between any symmetry noticed. Essentially, the more creative points of reference you can come up with, the easier it is to recall later on. Pure focusing on objects like that which flicker on and off suddenly will also enhance a certain type of memory that I now have hardcore. Basically the dots continue to hold a residual flash for about a second after they disappear in reality. Their are feeling impressions of where they are from that experience alone.

Kind of weird to describe, but I swear to you none of this existed before I rewired my brain by practice and sheer will alone. I would just completely blank out on things like this.

59/60 and I remember which one I got wrong. I did go kind slow got 43 but oh well, it made my brain feels funny which I enjoy. Also I blame my keyboard for the slow time.

55/60, response time 585.7, brain age 25.27 (although 2 errors I clicked the wrong button by mistake and on one I didn't respond fast enough).

It's weird, I felt like I was mostly guessing but I don't have to run any stats to say I was better than chance. However I'm not sure if this is designed into the experiment or not, but some shapes could be stored as patters (e.g. I'd remember a 'U' shape and two dots rather than the location of every dot). Doing that helps offload the working memory aspect quite a bit and if use of strategies like that differs from person to person (which I'm sure it will) then it is a possible confound.

Oh geez apparently I was overthinking this test. You mean we weren't supposed to try and recognize patterns?? Maybe that's why my brain age was so high (I'm 30). It seems to put more weight on reaction time than accuracy.

I'm going to retake twice. Once just "going with my gut" and second with entirely random pick "all left" and report back.

1: 58/2 age 21.66

2: 25/35 age -49.95


So basically, this test is bunk. It measures ones ability to push the button fastest. It seems to outweigh accuracy to the extent that it's simply not testing working memory, or executive functioning.

OMG, I'm serious. I can't believe how badly I did on this. I'm so embarrassed. I scored:

correct answers: 39
incorrect answers: 21
average response time: 666.82 ms
average accuracy score: 65%
performance brain age: 100.95.

I must have got the worst results out of everyone

Correct: 54
Incorrect: 6
Accuracy: 90%
Response time: 444.26 ms
Age: -15.11

58 and 1 and the 1 was absolutely a mistake I remember. 551ms response time and brain age of 1.06. Honestly, after the practice and once you got the hang of how to visualize it, you basically can't mess up unless you're distracted...you just have to remember the shape the white squares make and you're set. I think all of our scores and response times would have been better if we could use Y for Yes and N for no or something because the hardest part was choosing left or right, ha!

I tried memorising the shape they made, and if there was a pattern to where they appeared, e.g. one on the first line, two the second, back to one on the third and back to two on the fourth etc. I felt stressed because 3 seconds wasn't long enough to imprint the pattern onto my brain so it made me panic and I think this affected my score a lot, and I also had a headache when I did it. Even so, I still can't believe me awful score. Does this mean I have crap executive function? I believe I do anyway, but is this some sort of confirmation?

Is the test crap? I hope so. But it taps into one component of executive function, namely working memory - holding one thing in mind and comparing this to something new. This is central to EF. Folks with ADD( PI ) usually fail with this type of EF.

The net offers an online purchase of a one-back ( two-three-four, etc) exercise that boosts working memory. I can only reach to a certain level. A decent improvement, but when it comes to learning something that I'm not interested in, then the exercise did nothing more in real- life that I can measure. The lack of interest (or having an interest) and arousal seems to play a big part here for me. All in all it still boils down to executive functioning because typically people can elicit this function at their beckoned call - they make it work.

I have a hunch that people on the spectrum *can do* with regards to something that falls in line with a special interest; but encounter problems when they step outside of this (with working memory).

Looking at this on a deeper level, this problem appears to be entirely emotive. -->

What do you think?

I got no warning or virus using Chrome with Windows 8 Consumer Preview.

It says I should be 48 years of age and I'm only 15. I actually thought I was doing pretty well until I saw my results, I missed 6 I think, I closed it shortly after viewing so I can't copy results. I always figured I had an average or bad memory for visual stuff.

Last edited by r84shi37 on 07 Nov 2012, 8:06 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wow, apparently my brain is as old as a 61-year-old's. How depressing.

Heh, my score was that of someone in their late seventies... I'm sixteen. XD

Oh dear, I hope that there wasn't a virus!

Correct Answers: 46
Incorrect Answers: 14
Average Time: 638.32ms
Accuracy: 76.66%
Brain Age: 71.93

I'm 34...