Targets: Reaction
React to colored objects
About this trainer
Targets: Reaction is a simple reaction-time task. You wait for the signal — a target appears or the screen changes colour — and tap as fast as you possibly can, without jumping the gun before the cue. The whole point is to measure and shave milliseconds off the gap between seeing and acting.
What it develops
It trains the speed of your simple reaction: how quickly you detect a stimulus and fire off a single, pre-planned motor response. It also sharpens your readiness to act and your impulse control, since reacting before the signal counts as a miss.
History
Measuring human response speed grew out of 19th-century astronomy, where Friedrich Bessel noticed around 1822 that different observers timed star transits differently — the 'personal equation'. Hermann von Helmholtz then measured nerve-signal speed in 1850, and the method matured into a tool of experimental psychology. From there the simple-reaction test became a lab staple and, much later, a fixture of sports training, driving research and gaming.
Who created it — and when
There is no single inventor of the reaction-time task. The Dutch physiologist Franciscus Cornelis Donders is the key pioneer: in 1868 he formalised the use of reaction times to study mental processes (mental chronometry), building on Bessel's astronomy and Helmholtz's physiology. The plain tap-on-signal version is a generic experimental method, not a branded game.
How to train
Eliminate distractions and keep your hand relaxed and resting in the same spot every trial. Watch for the signal but resist the urge to anticipate it — predicting the timing leads to false starts, not faster scores. Run short blocks of many trials rather than a few tense attempts, and track your average and your slowest reactions, not just your best fluke.
How long to practise
Reaction is fatigue-sensitive, so keep it brief: 2-5 minutes of focused trials, once a day, is plenty. Short, frequent sessions beat long ones, and your numbers will sag the moment you are tired, sleepy, or distracted.
Evidence base
What is solidly shown is narrow: with practice you get measurably faster and more consistent at this exact task, mostly by cutting false starts and lapses. Your floor, though, is largely set by neurophysiology — nerve conduction and processing speed — so a healthy adult sits near 200-250 ms and cannot train that down without limit. Claims that reaction drills broadly sharpen the mind, raise intelligence, or prevent cognitive decline are weak and largely unproven; transfer beyond the trained task is the exception, not the rule. Your daily score is also a sensitive readout of sleep, alertness and fatigue.
Recommendations
Treat your average over many trials as the real measure, and use a bad day as a signal to check your sleep rather than to grind harder.
FAQ
Can I really make my reaction time faster?
Yes, but within limits. Practice trims false starts and lapses so your average improves, yet your fastest possible response is mostly capped by nerve and brain processing speed, which training cannot lower indefinitely.
What is a good simple reaction time?
For a healthy adult a visual simple reaction lands roughly around 200-250 ms. Treat any single number cautiously — fatigue, sleep, caffeine and the device you use all shift it.
Will this make me smarter or a better driver?
Don't count on broad carry-over. You will get faster at this task, but evidence that reaction drills boost general intelligence or real-world skills like driving is weak, so judge it as reaction practice, not a brain upgrade.
Variants
Variations include choice reaction time (pick the right response among several targets), go/no-go tasks (act on some cues, withhold on others), audio instead of visual signals, and 'whack-the-target' versions where the target also moves, adding an aiming component.