Home▸Cognitive Science▸Psychology Advanced Attention Mechanisms Simulation

🧪 Psychology Advanced Attention Mechanisms Simulation

Interactive dual-task simulator: fire two rapid stimuli at a shared response-selection bottleneck and watch the Psychological Refractory Period emerge — Task 2's reaction time slows as its stimulus onset asynchrony shrinks, exactly as the structural-bottleneck model of attention predicts.

Cognitive Science2DModerate60 FPS📱 Mobile-adapted

This simulation explores the cognitive processes involved in attention by modelling exactly why a person can't fully divide it: a shared, single-channel response-selection stage. Two stimuli race down parallel 3D lanes toward a common bottleneck gate — you control how close together they arrive (SOA) and how hard each task is to perceive, then watch the second task's reaction time balloon as it's forced to queue behind the first. Toggling the structural bottleneck off removes the queueing entirely, letting you compare a serial attentional model against a parallel one and see the Psychological Refractory Period effect emerge from first principles rather than being told about it.

⚙ Under the hood

This simulation explores the cognitive processes involved in attention – specifically, how individuals focus on relevant stimuli and filter out distractions. It demonstrates different attentional models.

Attention ModelsCognitive ProcessesStimulus Filtering

2D · HTML5 Canvas 2D · 60 FPS target · runs fully client-side, no install