Does this letter match the one two back?
The n-back is a classic working memory task. Letters appear one at a time. Press Match whenever the letter on screen is the same as the one shown two steps earlier. One round takes about a minute.
Press Start. The first letters cannot be matches, so just watch them.
A calmer way to do this every day
This page is from the team behind Cognilo: Brain Training Games for iPhone and iPad. The n-back is one demanding task. According to its App Store listing, Cognilo is built differently:
- The Daily 5: five short brain games a day, picked for your level
- Six categories: memory, focus, logic, numbers, spatial and language
- About six minutes at a typical pace, untimed by default
- A clear result for each round and a practical tip for the next attempt
- No account, no questionnaire, and it works offline
Cognilo is a puzzle game, not a medical or diagnostic tool. Results on this page do not transfer to the app.
Reading your result
Hits are matches you caught. Missed are matches you let go by. False alarms are presses when the letter did not match.
Accuracy counts both kinds of correct response: pressing on a match and holding back on a non-match. Pressing on everything gets every hit but a poor accuracy, which is why false alarms matter.
Expect 1-back to feel easy and 3-back to feel hard. That jump is the point of the task: each extra step back is one more item to hold and update. A single round is a small sample, so play a level a few times before deciding it is too easy.
Getting better at n-back shows you have practised n-back. Researchers disagree about how far that practice carries over to other thinking, so treat it as a workout you can measure, not a promise.
Questions
What is an n-back test?
It is a working memory task. Items appear one at a time and you respond whenever the current item matches the one shown n steps earlier. In a 2-back you compare each letter with the one two before it.
What is a good score on a 2-back?
There is no single pass mark and this page does not compare you with other people. As a rough guide, catching most matches with few false alarms means the level is comfortable, and you can try 3-back.
Does n-back training make you smarter?
Practice reliably makes people better at the n-back itself. Whether that improvement transfers to general intelligence or everyday memory is still debated by researchers, and this page makes no such claim.
More from this site
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