Online Reaction Tests & Women’s Cognitive Health (Test Yours!)

A team of researchers looked into the use of online reaction tests (in which, for example, one clicks whenever a certain prompt is shown, or for more of a cognitive challenge, one presses a numerical key when the corresponding digit is shown) to cognitive health in women at different ages.

Why women? To quote the man who had the honor of being the first-listed author on the study (something that happens mysteriously often in science),

❝Women have long been under-represented in healthy aging research, despite making up more than half the population. We developed an easy way to measure cognitive function in the home, without the need for individuals to travel to clinics or receive home visits. Our research shows that testing of cognitive function in the home largely acceptable, easy and convenient❞

About that convenience: they used data from the UK Women’s Cohort Study, which involved over 35,000 British women, and then specifically focused on a follow-up study of 768 participants aged 48–85.

Of the two kinds of online reaction tests we described up top, they used the numerical kind. The participants also filled in a questionnaire about their personal traits (demographic data, mostly, though things like self-reported level of health literacy, and how they would rate their overall health).

What they found

The findings included:

• Younger women were more likely to participate, with participation rates dropping from 89% at age 45 to 44% at age 65.
• Each higher level of education increased the likelihood of volunteering by 7%.
• Women who rated themselves as having “high” intelligence were 19% more likely to participate than those who considered themselves of “average” intelligence.
• Women with lower self-reported health literacy made fewer errors, possibly due to taking longer to decide on answers—consistent with findings from older adults.

You can read the full paper itself here: Health literacy in relation to web-based measurement of cognitive function in the home: UK Women’s Cohort Study

Why this matters

We wrote, a little while ago, about the use of online games (of a specific kind) to improve cognitive function:

Synergistic Brain-Training: Let The Games Begin (But It Matters What Kind) ← the good news is, these are very accessible too

When it comes to rapid and/but correct reactions, this becomes really critical:

How (And Why) To Train Your Pre-Frontal Cortex ← Dr. Sandra Chapman advocates strongly for this, and it’s closely related to working memory and the ability to focus

Want to test yours?

Here are two ways to do it (now, for free, without needing to sign up for anything; the tests are right there on the page):

• HumanBenchmark.com’s Reaction Time Test ← this one’s just a “click when the red panel turns green” test, but the merit here is that it compares your scores to a very large dataset of other people
• Keypress Reaction Time Test ← this one’s the kind that was used in the study, and requires pressing the correct numerical key when the corresponding digit is shown on the screen. You can make it easier or harder by restricting or increasing the range of numbers it uses (default setting is to use the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6)

Enjoy!