A cognitive lab your students run themselves.
Instructors in cognitive psychology, research methods and statistics courses already assign these tasks as lab exercises. Usually the first we hear of it is a cohort arriving from a learning platform. Create a class link and your class gets a page of its own: every student gets their result, and you see the class data as it comes in, with a CSV to download. At no cost, as everything here.
Shaded curve: the population reference. Dots: one per student, under a code, never a name.
Four steps, two of them yours
A single tutorial slot is enough for the tasks. The data is there before the next one.
Create the link
Name the class, pick the tasks, and paste the link in the learning platform or the syllabus, with a date.
Complete the tasks
Each task takes a few minutes on a phone or laptop. Every student sees their own scores and percentiles immediately.
The summary fills in
Pseudonymous rows with scores, percentiles and response-time summaries appear on your class page as students finish, with a CSV to download.
Teach from the data
Distributions, outliers, reliability, the limits of a norm. The scoring rules are published, so the class can audit them.
The paradigms a syllabus already covers
The tasks are the ones the textbook describes, so a lab session can reproduce the effect the lecture introduced. Each has its own page with the scoring rules and reference values.
Browse every task- Attention and inhibition
- Stroop colour-word, flanker task, go/no-go, stop-signal task and the continuous performance test. The Stroop effect alone fills a session on automaticity and interference.
- Working memory
- digit span forward and backward, n-back, Corsi block-tapping, operation span and a word list recall task. Good for Baddeley's model, serial position and capacity limits.
- Executive function
- trail making A and B, the Wisconsin card sorting test and the Tower of London: set shifting, perseveration and planning.
- Processing speed
- Simple and choice reaction time, symbol coding and paced serial addition. Reaction time distributions make a natural first dataset for a statistics class.
- Reasoning and language
- matrix reasoning, mental rotation, word fluency and lexical decision, which pairs with any lecture on the mental lexicon.
- Numerical cognition
- number line estimation, dot comparison and magnitude comparison, the paradigms behind the approximate number system and dyscalculia research.
What you see on the class page
An example class of 24 on digit span: the distribution first, then every row. The CSV carries the same rows plus response-time summaries.
| Student | Forward | Backward | Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| S01 | 7 | 5 | 61 |
| S02 | 6 | 4 | 38 |
| S03 | 8 | 6 | 82 |
| S04 | 5 | 3 | 12 |
| S05 | 7 | 4 | 50 |
| S06 | 9 | 7 | 96 |
| S07 | 6 | 5 | 45 |
| S08 | 7 | 6 | 68 |
| S09 | 6 | 3 | 30 |
| S10 | 8 | 5 | 76 |
| S11 | 7 | 5 | 61 |
| S12 | 5 | 4 | 18 |
| Student | Forward | Backward | Percentile |
|---|---|---|---|
| S13 | 6 | 4 | 38 |
| S14 | 7 | 5 | 61 |
| S15 | 8 | 7 | 90 |
| S16 | 6 | 4 | 38 |
| S17 | 7 | 4 | 50 |
| S18 | 6 | 5 | 45 |
| S19 | 7 | 6 | 68 |
| S20 | 5 | 4 | 18 |
| S21 | 8 | 6 | 82 |
| S22 | 7 | 5 | 61 |
| S23 | 6 | 4 | 38 |
| S24 | 7 | 5 | 61 |
Before you put it in the syllabus
Is it free for a class to use?
Yes. The tasks, the results each student sees and the class summary cost nothing, for any class size. There are no participant fees and no licence.
Do students need an account?
Yes, to keep their results. Students sign in with an email code or a Google account, and it takes about a minute. The account is theirs, not the institution's, and we never pass names or email addresses to the instructor.
What data do I receive?
A class page with one row per student under a code: scored metrics, percentiles against the published norms and response-time summaries, live as students finish, with a CSV to download. Trial-level data is available where the task logs it. See the example on this page.
How does this compare with PsyToolkit, PEBL or Gorilla?
Those are experiment builders: you design or adapt a task, then host it. Here the tasks are already built, scored against published normative tables and documented, and students use their own phones or laptops. If a course needs a custom paradigm, a builder is the right tool. If it needs the classic ones with data back by the next session, this is faster.
Can it be used in a research methods or statistics course?
Yes, and it is the natural fit. Reaction time distributions, span scores and percentiles give a class a dataset it generated itself: descriptive statistics, outliers, test-retest comparisons and the limits of a norm, with the scoring rules open to audit.
Are the tasks validated?
They are standard paradigms scored against published normative tables, and every scoring rule is documented on the scoring engine page. Validation studies against laboratory batteries are open, and a class can even run one; the research collaboration page describes how.
Is there a Spanish version?
Yes. The tasks, this page and the class summary exist in Spanish, so a bilingual department can run the same lab in either language.
What students and you should know
Participation is the student's choice
The tasks are open to anyone. A student who prefers not to share their data with the class can still complete them and keep the result to themselves: the class link asks each student, and the choice can be changed later from the same link.
Scores are not a diagnosis
A percentile places a score against a published norm. It says nothing about ability, effort or a condition on its own, and every page carries that disclaimer.
Identities stay with us
Students sign in to keep their results. The summary you receive carries a code per student. We never pass on names or email addresses.
Ages 13 and over
Adult norms are used throughout. For a class under 18, the comparison is indicative only.
The scoring is auditable
Every rule and every normative table is documented on the scoring engine page, which makes a good reading for a measurement seminar.
Scoring engine documentationResearch is a separate conversation
A class exercise needs no ethics approval from us. A study does, and the research collaboration page describes what we provide for one.
Research collaborationTeaching a course this term?Create the class link yourself, in about a minute. Prefer to write first? The collaboration form reaches us.
Create a class link