Memory and Attention Lab
Our Memory and Attention Lab is a browser-based cognitive task tool for students, teaching demos, and introductory research. Run classic memory and attention tasks, compare conditions, and export usable data without patching together half a study from notes, guesswork, and whatever spreadsheet happens to be open.
It includes four core tasks in one clean interface: Digit Span, Spatial Span, N-Back, and Continuous Performance Task. Use Free Play to explore the tasks quickly, or switch to Project Mode for participant instructions, practice trials, condition labels, and export-ready results.
Personal use is free. Commercial and institutional use requires a licence which covers all our Labs.
Task Setup
Configure the task for this participant. Keep it tidy. It helps later when the dataset is no longer just a blur of good intentions.
Task Instructions
Show these instructions before the task begins.
A short practice round will begin first. These practice trials are not included in the final results.
Task Complete
Participant: | Condition:
What Memory and Attention Lab Does
The Original Matter Memory and Attention Lab gives you four classic cognitive tasks in one clean browser-based tool. It is designed for students, teaching demos, and introductory research where you need something more robust than improvised workarounds but much easier to use than specialist lab software. Use Free Play to explore the tasks quickly, or switch to Project Mode for participant instructions, practice trials, condition labels, and export-ready data.
The Four Tasks
Digit Span measures short-term verbal memory. Participants view a sequence of digits, then recall them in the same order, making it useful for simple memory comparisons and introductory recall designs.
Spatial Span measures visuospatial memory. Participants watch a sequence of locations in a grid, then reproduce the order, making it useful for classroom demonstrations and simple non-verbal memory studies.
N-Back measures working memory updating. Participants decide whether the current item matches one presented earlier in the sequence, allowing you to examine match detection, false alarms, and working memory load.
Continuous Performance Task measures sustained attention. Participants respond only to a target stimulus and withhold responses to non-targets, making it useful for simple attention, vigilance, and response monitoring designs.
How to Use It for a Simple Study
Choose one task and keep the design manageable. Select an independent variable such as time of day, distraction, background noise, fatigue, or practice. Keep the testing conditions as consistent as possible, run each participant through the same task, then export the results and compare recall accuracy, hit rate, false alarms, omission errors, or reaction times depending on the task you used.
How to Interpret Your Results
Memory and Attention Lab gives you trial-by-trial CSV data, which is much more useful than one tidy headline score pretending to explain everything. The sections below explain what the download contains, what to look at first, and how to read the results without treating every number as if it means the same thing.
Your CSV includes one row per trial. That usually means participant ID, task name, condition label, trial number, stimulus information, response, correct response, accuracy, reaction time where relevant, error type, and timestamp.
Some tasks also include task-specific columns such as sequence length, sequence mode, recall accuracy, n-level, match trial, or whether a target was present.
In plain terms, each row tells you what happened on that trial, how the participant responded, and whether the response matched what the task required.
Open the CSV in Excel or Google Sheets. The first sensible step is to sort or filter by condition label so you can compare groups or testing conditions without turning the file into a decorative wall of confusion.
After that, focus on the columns that matter for the task you used. A recall task and an attention task should not be interpreted in the same way just because both happen to produce numbers.
Digit Span: Start with full-sequence accuracy, mean sequence accuracy, and the longest correct span. If one condition produces shorter correct spans or lower recall accuracy, that is the clearest thing to notice.
Spatial Span: Again, start with full-sequence accuracy, mean sequence accuracy, and longest correct span. The main question is whether participants can reproduce the sequence reliably, not whether one trial happened to go especially badly.
N-Back: Look first at hit rate, false alarm rate, correct rejection rate, and mean correct reaction time. These work together. A participant can look “good” on one number while performing rather less impressively on the others.
Continuous Performance Task: Focus on hit rate, omission errors, commission errors, and mean correct reaction time. If attention drops, you may see more misses, more impulsive false responses, or both.
Keep the design simple. If you ran a distraction versus no-distraction comparison, morning versus evening, or a quiet versus noisy condition, sort the sheet by condition label and compare the key outcome columns directly.
Digit Span and Spatial Span: compare recall accuracy and longest correct span across conditions.
N-Back: compare hit rate and false alarm rate together, then look at correct rejection rate and reaction time.
Continuous Performance Task: compare hit rate, omission errors, and commission errors before worrying too much about reaction time.
If a condition difference appears consistently across several trials, it is worth paying attention to. If it depends on one odd row halfway down the sheet, it probably is not the foundation of a grand psychological theory.
Lower recall accuracy or a weaker hit rate does not automatically prove that memory or attention has dramatically deteriorated. Performance can shift for all sorts of ordinary reasons, including fatigue, distraction, boredom, misunderstanding the instructions, or participants deciding that effort is apparently optional.
It is also worth remembering that this is a browser-based teaching and introductory research tool. It is very useful for classroom demos, exploratory studies, and undergraduate projects, but it is not a tightly controlled lab setup.
Open the CSV, sort by condition, then compare the main outcome for your chosen task before trying any formal analysis.
In most cases, that means recall accuracy and span for Digit Span or Spatial Span, hit and false alarm patterns for N-Back, and hit rate plus omission and commission errors for the Continuous Performance Task.
Example Study Ideas
This tool works well for straightforward introductory designs, including:
background noise vs. silence on Digit Span recall
morning vs. evening on Spatial Span accuracy
1-back vs. 2-back performance in N-Back
fatigue or distraction effects on Continuous Performance Task hit rate
practice effects across repeated memory trials
A Quick Note on Precision
Memory and Attention Lab is a browser-based tool designed for teaching, demos, exploratory work, and introductory student research. It is useful, clean, and far less irritating than building these tasks manually, but it is not intended to replace specialist experimental software in high-precision lab settings.
Well suited to undergraduate work. For PhD-level precision, that is usually where the bigger software budgets and the slightly alarming equipment lists begin.
