How to play
Pictures flash by, about ten a second. One landscape is turned on its side: say which side its ground was on. A cartoon spider or a butterfly turns up to distract you. Sixteen rounds.
Watch, then tap left or right · Or arrow keys
Free in your browser, with ten levels that get harder. No account; your best scores stay on your device.
What the study found
People watched a fast stream of landscapes and reported which way a sideways one was turned. When an upsetting photo came two pictures before it, they got it wrong more often than after a neutral photo. With a longer gap the effect faded. The authors called it attentional rubbernecking. They used real upsetting photos; our cartoon spider is far milder, so the effect may be small or absent here.
Most, Chun, Widders and Zald · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, 2005
Why it matters
Something that grabs you emotionally holds your attention for a moment and hides what comes straight after. It happens to everyone. That is one reason KOZMO asks how often things happen over recent months, not about the one moment that stood out.
It is for fun: the game does not measure you.
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