Dossier: Reaction Field — The Inhibition Game
The Mechanic
Targets appear. Tap the right ones. Do not tap the wrong ones. Simple — until the rules start changing.
Reaction Field is not a reaction time test. It is a selective inhibition test. The measure that matters is not how fast you respond, but how accurately you control your responses. Speed without selectivity is noise. Selectivity under speed pressure is signal.
The 10 Acts
Each act introduces a new dimension of cognitive control:
Act 1: The Signal
Basic go/no-go. Green circles = tap. Red circles = do not tap. You learn the mechanic and establish a baseline response pattern.
Act 2: The Reveal
Circles appear gray, then reveal their color after a delay. You cannot pre-decide based on color — you must wait, observe, then respond. This tests impulse control under temporal uncertainty.
Act 3: The Swarm
Multiple targets appear simultaneously. You must process and respond to several stimuli in rapid succession. Accuracy under volume pressure.
The swarm tests a different failure mode than single targets. Your inhibition system must manage multiple go/no-go decisions in parallel — suppressing responses to the no-go targets while executing responses to the go targets, all within the same time window.
Act 4: Drift
Targets move. Not just appearing and disappearing — continuously drifting across the screen in curves and arcs. You must track moving stimuli, evaluate their go/no-go status, and respond while accounting for motion. Motor planning under spatial uncertainty.
Act 5: Inversion
The rule flips mid-level. Green was go, now green is no-go. Red was no-go, now red is go. Your automated response mapping — built across 50 levels of reinforcement — must be overridden instantly.
This is where error rates spike. The first trial after inversion reliably produces 40-60% error rates, even in experienced players. The biological cost of overriding an automated stimulus-response mapping is measured in those errors.
Act 6: The Measure
Size-based rules. Large targets = tap. Small targets = do not tap. Or the reverse. Color is irrelevant — you must inhibit your learned color-based responses and attend to a new feature dimension.
Act 7: The Narrow
Timing windows shrink to 150 milliseconds. The target appears and you have a fraction of a second to decide and respond. This is not about speed — it is about decision speed under extreme time constraints. Can you evaluate go/no-go in 150ms?
Act 8: The Matrix
Multi-rule conditions. Tap green circles but not green squares. Tap red squares but not red circles. Shape and color interact — you cannot rely on either feature alone.
Act 9: The Ghost
Targets appear at 20-40% opacity. Barely visible. You respond to ripple effects more than to the targets themselves. Tests perceptual sensitivity under inhibition demands.
Act 10: The Gauntlet
All mechanics combined. Moving, inverting, multi-rule, narrow-window, ghost-opacity targets. The final exam for your cognitive control system.
What Gets Measured
Reaction Field produces several distinct measurements:
Commission errors — tapping when you should not have. These measure inhibition failure. Your motor system fired despite the no-go signal.
Omission errors — not tapping when you should have. These measure attention failure. You missed the go signal or could not respond in time.
Response time distribution — not just average speed but the shape of your response time curve. Consistent responders show tight distributions. Impulsive responders show wide, skewed distributions.
Post-inversion recovery — how many trials after a rule change before your error rate returns to baseline. Faster recovery indicates more flexible cognitive control.
Accuracy under complexity — how your hit rate and false alarm rate change as more dimensions are added (color + shape + size + motion).
Scoring
The scoring system in Reaction Field penalizes errors more than it rewards speed:
Correct taps earn base points plus a speed bonus. Faster correct responses earn more.
Commission errors (false alarms) incur a penalty that scales with difficulty. Tapping a no-go target in Act 9 costs more than in Act 1.
Omission errors (misses) cost a life but do not subtract points. The punishment is losing the opportunity to earn, not losing what you have earned.
Streak multiplier builds across consecutive correct responses — both correct taps and correct withholdings. A correct non-response counts toward your streak.
Why Selective Inhibition Matters
Every deliberate action requires the suppression of competing actions. To reach for a cup, your motor system must suppress reaching for everything else on the table. To focus on a conversation, your attention system must suppress every other conversation in the room.
Inhibition is not the absence of action. It is the active suppression of unwanted action. It is metabolically expensive, cognitively demanding, and distinctly biological.
A machine does not inhibit. It selects. There is no competing response to suppress, no automated pattern to override, no biological horse race between go and stop signals.
Reaction Field measures the quality of your inhibitory control — the precision of the system that decides not just what to do, but what not to do.
Play Reaction Field