Hit It: Reaction and Impulse Control

Aim of the training

The module “Hit It” trains the responsiveness (medical term “Alertness”). Reaction speed, reaction confidence, and impulse control are trained.

It is trained to quickly increase and maintain the attention intensity.

Both tonic and phasic alertness can be improved.

Older person Maria trains the therapy module “Hit It” with her HeadApp Home Version.

Settings

Whenever the parameters are changed, a “Default” button appears. With this button, the settings can be reset to default.

If you don’t want to use the default settings, the following parameters can be adjusted:

Number of stimuli per task

This slider allows to individually set the number of stimuli per task between 20 and 100.

Limit training duration

Limiting the training duration may be useful for time management or therapeutic reasons.

When you click on “Limit training duration”, a slider appears. With this slider, the therapy duration can be set between 10 and 60 minutes.

Reaction time

If “Maximum reaction time by default” is enabled, the individual working speed of the training person is determined in a trial round.

When you click on “Maximum reaction time”, a slider appears. With this slider, the maximum reaction time can be set between 300 and 3000 milliseconds. Since the tasks get more difficult with each level, HeadApp automatically increases the time by 2% per level.
During the training, the set maximum reaction time is indicated by a yellow line in the reaction time diagram.

When training in the difficulty degree “Hard”, the “Minimum reaction time adaptive” can be set between 300 and 2000 milliseconds by means of the slide control. The therapist needs sure instincts to find an individual setting for each patient. This, however, makes an alertness training at the limit of performance possible.

In the evaluation, the reaction time is displayed as the “mean value of the medians” of the reaction times of all runs of a day in ms, by pointing the mouse to a calendar entry or an “error percentage” bar.

Basic value stimulus interval

Here a value between 1000 and 5000 milliseconds can be set. It influences the working speed of the training person.
If the difficulty degree “Medium” (random stimulus interval) is selected, the stimuli appear at an interval from -50% to +50% of the set value.

Alertness sound

Press the “Alertness sound” button to achieve an increase in mental activity – from tonic to phasic alertness.

Course of the training

The difficulty degree of the training automatically in- or decreases, depending on the percentage of correctly chosen cards within the time limit. 3 degrees of difficulty (Easy, Medium, and Hard) are available; each degree has 18 levels of difficulty.

Degree “Easy”: The stimuli appear in a fixed stimulus interval; it is predictable when the stimuli will appear.
Degree “Medium”: The stimuli appear in random stimulus intervals; it is unpredictable when the stimuli will appear.
Degree “Hard”: Adaptive stimulus interval: The stimulus interval decreases after a correct and increases after an incorrect reaction. The training person trains at the limit.

During the training, green and orange colored bars show whether the reaction was correct and fast enough (green), correct but not fast enough (orange), or incorrect (orange).

A yellow dot appears if the training person reacted too early (reaction during interstimulus interval).

Acoustic warning signals sound if the reaction was too early or incorrect.