Keypress

What you see

One trial is one schedule: a fixed sequence of periods that runs on its own clock and cannot be paused. The schedule always opens with a Go period and then alternates, Go, Stop, Go, Stop, and so on.

• In a Go period, press as fast as you can. You can press the Space bar or click the large pad on screen.
• In a Stop period, do not press at all.

The screen has three parts. At the top is the cue: the word Go or Stop, at levels 1 to 6. In the middle is the pad, which is highlighted during Go. Underneath is a timeline strip showing the whole schedule: every Go period is drawn as a lit bar, and a marker moves along the strip as time passes. Stop periods appear as gaps between the bars. A line under the timeline shows which period you are in and the target rate for this schedule, for example "Period 2 of 5 · target 3.5 presses per second".

Holding the Space bar down does not repeat. Each press has to be a fresh press.

What changes with level

Three things change as you climb: how many periods there are and how short the Stop periods get, how fast you are asked to press, and how obvious the cue is. Total Go time is split at random between the Go periods, but every Go period lasts at least 2 seconds.

The cue changes in three steps. Full (levels 1 to 3): a large Go or Stop above the pad. Reduced (levels 4 to 6): a smaller Go or Stop. Minimal (levels 7 to 10): no word at all; only the pad's highlight and the timeline tell you which period you are in. A schedule lasts about 17 to 19 seconds at level 1 and roughly half a minute at level 10.

What it measures

Keypress sits in the Inhibition facet of the Attention dimension, next to Pulse. It is scored mainly for processing speed, with a secondary weight on selective attention. It combines two classic lab traditions.

Pressing speed

The Finger Tapping Test is one of the oldest measures in neuropsychology. In the version described by Reitan and Wolfson, you press a key as often as you can during 10-second trials, over several trials with each hand. pymetrics' patent describes a touch-screen version, tapping a circle as fast as possible for 60 seconds, and calls it a test that can examine motor control.

Norms give a sense of scale. In Fromm-Auch and Yeudall's normative study, young adults averaged roughly 44 to 51 taps per 10-second trial with their preferred index finger.

• Men 18–2349.5 taps
• Men 24–3250.6 taps
• Women 18–2343.6 taps
• Women 24–3245.2 taps

That is about 4.4 to 5 taps per second on a lab tapping key. Keypress asks for 2.5 presses per second at level 1 and 5 per second at level 10, so the top levels ask for something close to the fastest rate a single finger typically sustains. The devices differ, so treat this as a sense of scale, not a direct comparison.

Stopping on cue

The Stop periods add response inhibition: withholding a response you are primed to make. In the stop-signal tradition, going and stopping are pictured as a race. A go process and a stop process run at the same time; if the stop process finishes first, the response is cancelled, and if the go process wins, the response escapes. Verbruggen and Logan's review sets out this independent race model. A second finding matters even more for strategy: fast responses are harder to inhibit than slow ones, and people who expect to have to stop raise their response threshold, which slows them down. In their experiments, that proactive caution appeared whenever stop signals were expected.

That trade-off is the whole game. Press too cautiously and you miss the rate. Press flat out with no plan for the boundary and presses escape into the Stop period.

How it is scored here

Every press is timestamped from the start of the schedule and sorted into one of three bins:

• Counted Go press: inside a Go period and more than 150 ms from either edge of it.
• Grace press: within 150 ms of any boundary, the start or end of any period. Grace presses are neither counted nor penalised.
• Stop violation: inside a Stop period and more than 150 ms from either edge.

Two measures are then combined:

• Activity = (counted Go presses ÷ total Go seconds) ÷ target rate, capped at 1. Reaching the target rate across the whole of the Go time gives full activity; pressing faster earns nothing extra.
• Restraint = 1 − Stop violations ÷ (2 × number of Stop periods), never below 0. So the restraint half is wiped out by an average of two stray presses per Stop period.

Score = (activity + restraint) ÷ 2. A schedule is perfect when activity reaches 1 and there are no Stop violations at all.

Two consequences are worth knowing. First, the activity rate divides by the whole Go time, including the grace strips and any delay before your first press, so you must press faster than the target while you are pressing. Second, a schedule with no presses at all still earns the restraint half and scores 50%. Doing nothing is never a good plan, but it shows how heavily restraint is weighted.

Difficulty is adaptive. A perfect schedule moves you up one level, a partly successful one keeps you where you are, and a schedule that scores zero moves you down. Your 0 to 100 score compares your schedule scores with what your level predicts, and 50 means you are doing what that level predicts. The session report shows your presses per second against the target, the steadiness of your rhythm (how much the gaps between presses vary) and how many presses fell in Stop periods.

Where you will meet it

• pymetrics. Candidate guides describe a Keypress game in which you press a key as fast as you can when prompted and stop when told. pymetrics' patent lists Finger Pressing and Go/No-Go among the tasks its system can use, together with the Effort Expenditure for Rewards Task (EEfRT). In the research version of the EEfRT, an easy trial requires 30 presses with the dominant index finger in 7 seconds and a hard trial 100 presses with the non-dominant little finger in 21 seconds. Candidate guides describe pymetrics' Easy or Hard game as a choice between an easy, lower-reward task and a hard, higher-reward one.
• Psychomotor batteries. Schuhfried's Motor Performance Series assesses fine motor abilities, including speed of movement, and lists personnel selection and manufacturing and safety suitability assessments among its uses. India's Computerised Pilot Selection System for the Indian Air Force evaluates psychomotor skills and information-processing speed and accuracy.

Keypress is a close cousin of these tasks, not a copy of any of them.

The method

1. Find your pressing grip before you start

   Rest your hand so your finger moves from the knuckle in short strokes, close to the key. Big strokes are slower and harder to stop. If you use the on-screen pad, keep your fingertip just above it. Before pressing Start, press lightly on the desk for a few seconds to settle your rhythm.

2. Watch the timeline, not the cue words

   The marker on the timeline shows exactly how far you are through the current period and where the next one begins. From level 7 the cue words disappear, but the timeline never does. Keep it in the lower edge of your vision the whole time.

3. Start each Go period on the boundary

   When the marker reaches a lit bar, start pressing. Do not wait to see the cue change and then react. A press up to 150 ms early is forgiven, so starting on the boundary costs you nothing, while reacting late costs you counted time in every period.

4. Press above the target rate

   Because the rate is calculated over the whole Go time, aim to press about 10 to 20% faster than the target shown under the timeline. The worked example shows why.

5. Brake just before the end of each bar

   As the marker nears the end of a lit bar, stop cleanly. Your last press can land up to 150 ms after the boundary without penalty, so stopping on the boundary itself is enough. What you must avoid is a press in the middle of the gap.

6. Keep your finger still, not tense, during Stop

   Lift your finger slightly off the key and rest. A finger pressed tight against the key is primed to twitch. Use the Stop time to watch the marker approach the next bar.

Worked example 1: scoring a level 4 schedule

You are at level 4. The schedule runs Go 5.2 s, Stop 3.1 s, Go 4.3 s, Stop 2.8 s, Go 5.5 s, Stop 4.0 s. You make 50 counted Go presses, 3 grace presses near boundaries, and one press in the middle of the second Stop period. What is your score, and what would a perfect schedule have needed?

Show the solution

Total Go time = 5.2 + 4.3 + 5.5 = 15.0 seconds.

Activity: 50 ÷ 15.0 = 3.33 presses per second. Against a 3.5 target that is 3.33 ÷ 3.5 = 0.952.

Restraint: three Stop periods, so the allowance is 2 × 3 = 6. One violation gives 1 − 1 ÷ 6 = 0.833.

Score = (0.952 + 0.833) ÷ 2 = 0.893, or about 89%. It is not perfect, so you stay at level 4.

The 3 grace presses did nothing either way.

For a perfect schedule you needed at least 3.5 × 15 = 52.5, so 53 counted Go presses, and no violations. Notice that the single stray press cost you about 8 points of score, while the 3 missing presses cost about 2.5. Restraint is the expensive half.

Worked example 2: how fast do you really need to press?

You are at level 8: five Go periods totalling 17 seconds, and a target of 4.5 presses per second. Compare two habits. Reactive: you start pressing about 0.3 s after each Go period opens and, to be safe, stop about 0.3 s before it closes. Anticipating: you use the timeline to start right on each boundary and stop right on each boundary. What pressing rate does each habit require for a perfect schedule?

Show the solution

Presses needed: 4.5 × 17 = 76.5, so 77 counted presses.

Reactive. Each Go period loses 0.3 s at the start and 0.3 s at the end, 0.6 s in all. Across five periods that is 3.0 s, leaving 14.0 s of pressing. Required rate: 77 ÷ 14.0 = 5.5 presses per second.

Anticipating. The first and last 150 ms of each period are grace strips that never count, so even perfect timing loses 0.3 s per period, 1.5 s in all. That leaves 15.5 s. Required rate: 77 ÷ 15.5 = 5.0 presses per second.

Compare those with the pressing norms above, roughly 4.4 to 5 presses per second for young adults on a lab key. The reactive habit demands a rate beyond what most people sustain; the anticipating habit brings it within reach. Reading the timeline is worth half a press per second, more than most people can gain by trying to press harder.

Before you move on, try the reaction drill. The delay you measure is roughly what you lose at every period change if you wait for the cue instead of reading the timeline.

Practice drillSign in to try it

Tips and traps

Levelling up

A perfect schedule needs full activity and zero violations, so every promotion depends on both halves at once. Three pressures build as you rise:

• More boundaries. Level 1 has two changes of period; level 10 has eleven. Every boundary is a chance to leak a press or lose counted time.
• Faster target, shorter HOLDs. The target climbs from 2.5 to 5 per second, and Stop periods shrink to as little as 1.5 seconds. A short Stop arrives before your pressing rhythm has fully settled.
• Fading cues. From level 7 there are no words. If you have been relying on the words, you suddenly have to track the indicator or the timeline instead. If you have been using the timeline all along, this change barely matters.

Raw finger speed is not where most of the points are, as the worked examples show. Your use of the schedule is: anticipating starts, braking on the boundary, and staying relaxed during Stop. Those are the skills this game rewards most, and they respond to deliberate practice.

1. Week 1: clean stopping
   • Three sessions of about 10 minutes at your natural level
   • Goal: zero Stop violations, even at the cost of rate
   • Rest your finger off the key in every Stop period
2. Week 2: timeline anticipation
   • Three sessions; start every Go period as the marker touches the bar
   • Compare presses per second in the report with week 1
   • Add one short Pulse session for go/no-go restraint in a different form
3. Week 3: speed under control
   • Three sessions at your highest stable level
   • Press 10 to 20% above the target while pressing
   • Try one set with two alternating fingers and keep whichever gives steadier rhythm

Check yourself

5 practice questions

1. You press 80 ms after a Stop period begins. How is that press scored?
2. At level 6 there are four Stop periods. How many Stop violations wipe out the restraint half completely?
3. A candidate does not press at all during a schedule. What do they score?

and 2 more

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Sources

1. Fromm-Auch, D., & Yeudall, L. T. (1983). Normative data for the Halstead-Reitan neuropsychological tests. Journal of Clinical Neuropsychology, 5(3), 221–238. doi:10.1080/01688638308401171
2. Millisecond Software. Finger Tapping Test (based on Reitan & Wolfson, 1985). millisecond.com
3. Verbruggen, F., & Logan, G. D. (2008). Response inhibition in the stop-signal paradigm. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12(11), 418–424. PMC2709177
4. Verbruggen, F., & Logan, G. D. (2009). Proactive adjustments of response strategies in the stop-signal paradigm. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35(3), 835–854. PMC2690716
5. Treadway, M. T., Buckholtz, J. W., Schwartzman, A. N., Lambert, W. E., & Zald, D. H. (2009). Worth the 'EEfRT'? The effort expenditure for rewards task as an objective measure of motivation and anhedonia. PLoS ONE, 4(8), e6598. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0006598
6. Polli, F., & Yoo, J. (Pymetrics Inc.). Systems and methods for data-driven identification of talent. US Patent 9,842,314. Google Patents
7. GraduatesFirst. Pymetrics games: practice and guide (candidate-reported game descriptions). graduatesfirst.com
8. JobTestPrep. Free pymetrics games practice and guide (candidate-reported game descriptions). jobtestprep.com
9. Schuhfried. MLS: Motor Performance Series. Vienna Test System Marketplace. marketplace.schuhfried.com
10. Defence Research and Development Organisation. Computerized Pilot Selection System (CPSS). drdo.gov.in

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