Divided Attention
Herd every cat to its own basket
Start training freeFree to start. Plays in your browser, no download.
What is the Divided Attention?
Divided attention is the ability to keep several things going at the same time. Daniel Kahneman’s 1973 book Attention and Effort described attention as a limited supply of mental effort that can be spread across tasks, so every extra task leaves less for the rest. Christopher Wickens later refined the idea in his multiple resource theory: tasks get in each other’s way most when they need the same kind of processing, for example two jobs that both rely on looking and judging positions in space.
Researchers study divided attention with dual-task and multitasking set-ups, and the skill matters wherever several moving things have to be kept on track at once, from driving in traffic to air traffic control. The Neuroptimize Divided Attention game turns this into a garden of paths. Cats trot out of a gate one after another, and you flip switches at the junctions so that every cat reaches the basket of its own colour. With several cats out at once, you have to keep moving your attention from one to the next.
How to play the Divided Attention
- The garden has a gate at the top and a row of baskets along the bottom, each with its own colour and a symbol on its cushion (a circle, triangle, heart, square, star, diamond or moon). The paths between them split at round switches.
- Each switch shows an arrow pointing the way it currently sends cats, the open branch has a bright stripe, and the closed branch has a small fence across it. Tap a switch to flip it. A cat takes whichever way a switch is set at the moment it reaches it.
- Cats come out of the gate one by one. Each cat wears its colour and the matching symbol on its bib, so you can match it to a basket even if two colours look alike to you. A cat in the right basket scores and builds your combo; a cat in the wrong basket costs points and breaks it.
- A session lasts 75 seconds. Every cat that comes out has time to get home before the end, and the results show how many cats you got home, how many went to the wrong basket, and the most cats you had out at once.
- Early levels have 3 baskets and a new cat about every 4.5 seconds. The garden grows to 4 baskets at level 4, 5 at level 9, 6 at level 16 and 7 at level 25, while the cats walk faster and come out more often, down to about one every 1.6 seconds at level 30.
- New kinds of cat join as you climb: quick kittens from level 6, cats that sit down for a moment on the way from level 10, sleeping cats on the grass to ignore from level 13, bridges where two paths cross just above the baskets from level 19, and cats with the zoomies that sprint for a stretch from level 27.
Strategies and tips
Set switches early
You do not have to wait until a cat is next to a switch. As soon as a cat leaves the gate, check its colour and set the switches along its route, then move on to the next cat while it walks.
Work from the front of the queue
The cat closest to a switch needs you first. Scan the garden from the cats nearest the baskets back towards the gate, and only flip a switch once the cat in front has passed it.
Read the symbol, not just the colour
Every colour has its own symbol on the cat’s bib and on the basket’s cushion. Matching symbols is just as fast as matching colours and removes any doubt between similar shades, such as orange and yellow.
Watch the kittens
From level 6 small kittens trot about a third faster than grown cats. They reach the switches sooner, so give them priority when a kitten and a cat are heading for the same junction.
Follow bridges to the end
From level 19 two neighbouring paths swap places on a bridge just above the baskets. Trace a path all the way down before you trust it, because the basket straight below a junction may not be the one that path reaches.
The science behind the Divided Attention
In his 1973 book Attention and Effort, Daniel Kahneman described attention as a limited pool of mental effort that can be shared out between tasks: the more one task takes, the less is left for the others. Christopher Wickens’s multiple resource theory (2002) added that tasks interfere most when they draw on the same kind of processing, such as two visual and spatial jobs at once. Here every cat on the paths is a small visual-spatial job of its own, so you keep moving your attention between them and deciding which switch needs you next.
Frequently asked questions
What is divided attention?
Divided attention is the ability to respond to more than one task or source of information at the same time. In practice it often means switching your focus quickly between several things that all need checking, such as the cars around you when you drive. Performance usually drops as more tasks are added, especially when they use the same senses.
Can I play if I am colour-blind?
Yes. Every colour comes with its own symbol, shown on each cat’s bib and on its basket’s cushion, so you can match cats to baskets by symbol alone.
Can you train divided attention?
People get better at the tasks they practise, and multitasking games like this one improve with play. How far that improvement carries over to everyday multitasking is still debated in research, so it is best seen as a fun way to practise keeping several things in mind at once.
Is the Divided Attention game free?
Yes, it is on the free plan. Free players unlock it by earning XP until their player level reaches 16, and Pro members can play it straight away.