08 / 08
Training Your Reaction Time — What Improves and What Doesn't
Ways to improve reaction time — repeated practice, anticipation training, action games and lifestyle habits — and their limits, based on research.
Reaction speed is partly innate, but measured values vary quite a bit with practice and condition. Still, it's worth distinguishing what actually improves.
The familiarity effect
The quick improvement you see in the first few sets is mostly a familiarity effect with the task. You learn what the signal looks like and the range of the wait time, and your finger's ready position settles in. After this phase, simple reaction time tends not to decrease much with practice.
Choice reaction benefits more from practice
Choice reaction and Go/No-go, which have a decision stage, improve more with practice. As the link between signal and response becomes automatic, decision time shrinks. Repeatedly drilling specific situations in sports works on the same principle.
Action video games
Dye, Green and Bavelier (2009) reviewed studies showing that people who play action video games tend to respond faster without losing accuracy. This suggests that repeated experience in environments requiring quick decisions can affect processing speed.
Anticipation and attention training
- Reading cues — In sports, practicing reading cues that precede the signal, such as an opponent's preparatory movement, advances your actual reaction the most.
- Sustaining attention — To reduce omission errors in Go/No-go, you need practice keeping your attention throughout the set.
- Impulse control — If you make many commission errors, start by practicing clearly distinguishing ● from ✕, even if it slows you down a little.
Lifestyle habits
Getting enough sleep strongly affects the stability of your reaction time more than its average. Moderate caffeine can help temporarily, but it can't replace sleep. Many studies also show that regular exercise helps maintain overall cognitive function.
How to train with this site
- Treat the first set as a warm-up and look at your results from the second set on.
- About 3–5 sets a day, at the same time of day, makes your trend easy to read.
- Alternating between visual, auditory and Go/No-go lets you practice both simple and choice reactions.
- If your results suddenly get worse, don't push yourself — rest. It may be a sign that fatigue has built up.