Visual Processing Test
Visual Processing Test is an online study which tests the user’s top-down visual processing ability.
Why build this?
I heard about a study in a podcast.
TLDR: some smart people had the idea that maybe people who get hallucinations just have brains that are better at a specific visual skill, and hallucinations are an unfortunate side-effect.
I was interested in taking the test myself. I don’t get hallucinations myself, but I’m curious how well I score on visual tests.
Here’s one other visual test, more of a game but pretty fun!
Let’s make it
Since the study was over and I couldn’t take their test, I did the next best thing… I made it myself.
The study had pretty clear methodology, and it was easy enough to translate that to a javascript based web-app.
Running it
Once the web app was up and running, I roped in a few coworkers who were happy to be the test subjects and collected the data.
My aggregated results came out to be the opposite of what was in the original study, but take it with a grain of salt… I’m only a science appreciator so I’m sure I made many errors along the way, in the methodology or even the formulas used to give the final graphs.
But the point of it was just to have a little fun, so that’s a success.
I never did get to run the test myself. Since I’d spent all that time developing it, I’d primed myself for the test images, so my own results would be unreliable! Oh well! :) Still had fun.