Welcome to Oxford Cognition. This research includes a series of cognitive exercises that will challenge your memory, concentration, searching, planning and decision-making skills. With your help, we will better understand how the human brain works.
1️⃣ Before you start…
- Please use a desktop computer or laptop with a keyboard and mouse. This is because tablets and phones are not as stable and their screens are relatively small.
- Use the Google Chrome (Download Chrome) or Firefox (Download Firefox) browser. Please make sure your browser is up-to-date.
- Get your participant ID ready! You can find it in the email you received. If you don’t have one, please contact us before starting.
The whole study is composed of 3 parts. Each takes about 20-25 minutes. Feel free to take breaks between parts. For example, you can do one part on Day 1, part 2 on Day 2 and part 3 on Day 3. But please try to complete them within 3 days. Moreover, once you click the button to start, please try to complete that part in one go.
Once you complete all exercises, you will be told a passphrase. Please note it down. We might ask about it.
2️⃣ Ready? Click the button to start!
Part 1 is all about memory, in particular, how accurate you can remember what is where. There will be two exercises, and take about 25 – 30 minutes to complete all.
You will first take a look at the consent form of this study. If you are happy with everything, you will then be redirected to a website to start your first cognitive exercise.
You will be displayed with a series of 5 photos and interact with some objects in the photos. Then you will be asked about the photo to check how accurate your memory is. It takes about 15 minutes.
The 2nd exercise is similar. You will see some flower patterns on the screen and you need to remember their look and locations. This takes about 8-15 minutes. Don’t feel too worried if you find it difficult. It is a fun but challenging game, hope you enjoy it.
Part 2 is about creativity and visual construction skill. It’s more fun than Part 1 I promise. There will be a short questionnaire and two exercises. In total, it takes about 25 minutes.
You will draw lines between two red dots on the screen. Just draw as many lines as you can. Yes, as simple as it is. This part normally takes less than 5 minutes.
You will see a strange-looking picture and you need to use 13 “jigsaw” pieces to copy that picture on the screen. This puzzle will repeat multiple times with different pictures. It normally takes about 15 minutes to complete all. It’s fun!
Part 3 has three exercises and takes about 15 minutes.
The first one, again, is a memory game. A red dot will appear in different places on the screen and you will need to remember its location. It normally takes about 5 minutes.
The second exercise is called “Tower of London”. This practices your planning skills. Similar to the classic problem-solving game – the pyramid puzzle – here you will need to move beads in the least move number to match your board to the target board. It might take about 5 minutes.
The last exercise is Connect-all-dots. You will connect a sequence of 25 dots in a particular order. The study has two parts: in the first, the dots are all numbers from 1 to 25 and you need to connect them in sequential order; in the second part, the dots could be letters, and you need to connect the dots alternating numbers and letters 1-A-2-B… You need to connect the dots as fast as you can. This takes about 5 minutes.
⚠️ I accidentally exited during one part. Do I need to restart the part from the beginning?
No. Each exercise is designed to be independent, so you can start from the exercise where you exited. If you remember which exercise you were in, you can find the entrance on this page (click here!). If you can’t remember where you were, don’t worry, contact us (sijia.zhao@psy.ox.ac.uk), we will find you and send you the link!
⚠️ What if something went wrong?
For example, the screen got stuck while you are doing a task. This doesn’t happen often but if it happens, please close the browser and follow the instruction above to find the entrance to start the exercise where you got stuck. Otherwise, contact us!
3️⃣ What will happen next?
After you complete all three parts, we will take a look at your data and find a good way to visualise your performance for you. If possible, we hope you can participate in this study again 3 months and 6 months later. The exercises will be the same, and we would like to see if you will get better at them over time.
If you still haven’t hated us for pushing you to complete these challenging cognitive tasks, please share this with your family and friends! To get a better idea about our cognitive abilities, we need more people to try these exercises. We are also super welcome to any feedback. Please talk to us and let us know what you think! ❤️❤️❤️
These tasks are developed by Cognitive Neurology Research Group from University of Oxford. If you have any questions or queries about the task, please contact Dr Sijia Zhao (sijia.zhao@psy.ox.ac.uk). If you want to know more about our research, please visit our group page.