Reaction Time Guides

How reaction time is produced, what changes it, and how to read your measurements — all with sources. You can open the test directly from each guide to check for yourself.

01 How Reaction Time Works — The Three Stages of Perception, Decision and Movement From the moment a signal reaches your eyes or ears until your finger moves: the stages that make up reaction time and the factors that lengthen each one. 02 Visual vs. Auditory Reaction Time — Why We React Faster to Sound Why studies find auditory reactions faster than visual ones, and the device factors that can reverse that difference in a web test. 03 Choice Reaction and Hick's Law — Why More Options Slow You Down The differences between simple reaction, choice reaction and Go/No-go, Hick's law on how reaction time grows with the number of options, and what commission and omission errors mean. 04 What Affects Reaction Time — Age, Sleep, Caffeine and Fatigue How age, sleep deprivation, caffeine, fatigue and general condition change reaction time, based on research findings. 05 Device Latency — How Refresh Rate, Polling Rate and Bluetooth Add to Your Results We calculate how much monitor refresh rate, mouse and keyboard polling rate, touchscreens and Bluetooth audio add to your reaction time measurements. 06 The 0.1-Second False Start Rule in Athletics — Reaction Time in Sports World Athletics' rule that treats a reaction under 0.100 seconds after the starting signal as a false start, the reasoning behind it, and what reaction time means in other sports. 07 How to Read Your Results — Mean, Median, Best and Standard Deviation What the mean, median, best and standard deviation of your reaction time set each tell you, and how to interpret your personal progress. 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.