Coincidence-Anticipation Timing

What is the Coincidence-Anticipation Timing?

Coincidence-anticipation timing is the skill of making a movement arrive at the same moment as something moving towards you, like a bat meeting a ball or a hand closing on a throw. Researchers measure it with tasks such as the Bassin Anticipation Timer, a runway of lights that switch on one after another towards a target, where people press a button the instant the light reaches the end. The score is how many milliseconds early or late the press lands.

Fast action games lean heavily on this kind of timing, and they have become a research topic in their own right. Studies have linked action video game play to better eye-hand coordination and visual attention, and to faster, more accurate laparoscopic surgery drills. The Neuroptimize game turns anticipation timing into a duel: a ring closes on your shield as an enemy winds up, you parry at the moment of contact, then strike back while the enemy is staggered.

How to play the Coincidence-Anticipation Timing

1. Each session lasts 60 seconds. An enemy with a health bar stands at the top of the arena, and your shield sits at the bottom, with a Parry button on the left and an Attack button on the right.
2. When the enemy winds up, a yellow ring appears around your shield and shrinks. The blow lands the moment the ring meets the dashed circle around your shield: tap Parry right then. On a keyboard, Space, F or the left arrow parries.
3. A parry within a few dozen milliseconds of contact is Perfect and scores the most; one a little early or late still counts as a parry. Any earlier or later and the blow lands and breaks your combo, and a parry that comes too early also costs points.
4. Parrying the last blow of an attack staggers the enemy and lights up the Attack button. Tap it as fast as you can (J, Enter or the right arrow on a keyboard): every hit damages the enemy, and a perfect parry keeps it open 30% longer. Attacks while the enemy is on guard just clang off and break your combo.
5. Empty an enemy's health bar to defeat it for bonus points, and the next one steps in. Enemies get tougher every tier, so later ones take several staggers.
6. As the level rises, wind-ups get faster and the parry window gets tighter. Wind-up speeds start to vary at level 4, double strikes arrive at level 8, feints that are called off at level 13, triple strikes at level 19, wind-ups that hesitate at level 22, and from level 25 dashed rings that fade out before contact.

Strategies and tips

The science behind the Coincidence-Anticipation Timing

Timing an action to meet an arriving object, known as coincidence anticipation, is central to catching, hitting and blocking. Jerry Griffith and colleagues (1983) found that video game players beat non-players at eye-hand coordination on a pursuit rotor. Shawn Green and Daphne Bavelier (2003) showed in Nature that action game players have sharper visual attention, and that non-players who trained for 10 hours on an action game improved more than a group who played Tetris. James Rosser and colleagues (2007) found that surgeons who had played video games for over 3 hours a week made 37% fewer errors in laparoscopic drills.

Frequently asked questions