How do Continuous Performance Tasks work?

Several exercises in BrainHQ are known as continuous performance tasks (CPT) exercises. These are exercises that move quickly and require a fast response. The nature of these exercises means that they are scored both on accuracy of answers are and also speed of response. Because they are scored via these metrics, there are actually two ways to be marked wrong during a trial.

When BrainHQ users report being marked wrong even though they are confident that they had answered correctly, this is usually because they had answered after time had run out for that trial. Please view the animations below to see how this occurs.

The examples below are from the exercise Divided Attention. This exercise gives a condition (in the examples below, the condition is "same color"). If the two shapes meet the condition then answer "yes". If they don't meet the condition then answer "no". As with all CPT exercises, there is a time limit, and the timer is shown in the middle of the screen.

As a point of reference, this is how the exercise looks when the trial is answered correctly:

This animation shows a correct answer given within the time allotted.

Here's what it looks like to answer a trial incorrectly in Divided Attention:

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Once an incorrect answer is given, the timer will be reset in preparation for the next trial. In the animation above, there is still time on the timer when the answer is marked incorrect.

The second way to be marked wrong is to not answer within the time limit. This can be seen here:

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In this animation, the timer runs out before an answer is given.