Poppelreuter Tables

About the Poppelreuter task

The task is named after Walther Poppelreuter (1886–1939), a German neuropsychologist who developed figure-ground and visual search procedures to study selective attention and visual interference. Variants of these tables have been used in clinical and research contexts to probe how quickly people can extract a relevant signal from visual clutter.

What it measures

• Focused scanning: orderly movement through a noisy field without skipping or backtracking.
• Interference control: ignoring salient but irrelevant digits (bottom-right) while tracking the target rule (ascending center numbers).
• Speed–accuracy balance: pushing pace without sacrificing correctness, especially on harder layouts.

Difficulty modes

Practice is a short, structured one-minute warm-up and is not included in your tracked results. Normal 1–3 expand the grid and density, increasing the demand on serial search and sustained attention across three minutes.

Reading the score

Your score is simply the number of correct bottom-right entries within the time window. In Your results you can compare your performance across Normal modes. The practice run is just there to get familiar with the rule.

Training tips

• Use a systematic sweep (left-to-right or spiral) to avoid re-checking the same area.
• Keep a soft gaze: try to see the next 1–2 tiles ahead while typing the current answer.
• Short daily sessions build steadier progress than long marathons.