Ironically, I find myself easily putting myself in a slower mental state where I'm reliably getting 200s and 210s instead of 180s
One good thing I observe is that I notice the color change more than the text change, so I find it easier to stare into the blank red space instead of stare into the text. Also, green happens to be brighter than red, so this is also a simultaneous brightness change in addition to color. I intentionally defocus straight into the color, staring at the space between the icon at the top and the text-line at below, with almost 50% of my FOV bathed in solid color at a temporary viewing distance of 12 inches from the strobed 144Hz 27" ASUS TUF VG32V.
Suddenly, I got a 167ms result after just two tries (zero false starts!)...
Then I got 3 consecutive zero-falsestart 157ms-168ms results, before I fell out of my focus state by accident on the 4th and 5th.
after 2nd click |
after 3rd click |
after 5th click
But I would speculate that not everyone reacts the same speed to each different kinds of visual stimuli; that factor needs to be potentially studied in a more esports-relevant context.
Experimenting with oneself's different stimuli, and mental states, is very educational!
I speculate that on a per-player basis may tune themselves subconsciously to their respective most-efficient cues of visual stimuli. People who are good readers (less dyslexic) might respond faster to text changes, while people who aren't partially colorblind may respond faster to color changes, and so on; as a speculation. Naturally, the drive for winning means the multi-stimuli opportunity of a esports session has many opportunities for an individual player to fine-tune to their most optimal stimuli automatically in a subconscious manner, as a rote of training.
I have to observe that esports is full of unexpected interacting stimuli factors
- FOV of stimuli (fullscreen-game-flashes, versus a single faraway target suddenly appearing, and everything in between).
- Simultaneous visual stimuli (shape-change, color-change, brightness-change, text-change, size-change, peripheral, flicker-flash, etc)
- Supplemental stimuli (audio)
- Gently focussing oneself on a specific stimuli of a multi-stimuli (like focussing on brightness/color instead of text or icon).
- Calm zen factor (professional solders/military/self-defense forces/etc fear for lives but trained to aim calm+stable)
- Pumping/priming oneself but not pumping onself to distracted-panic-attack levels.
- Nonstressed and I am slow (too relaxed), too stressed I am slow (too shaky), so prime myself to the correct level.
- Fear factors (fear of loss of rankings etc)
- Etc.
This leads me to believe that an even bigger number of historic reaction-time tests are potentially more limited in scope than thought, given the esports era incentive for a player to dynamically fine-tune themselves to various multiple visual stimuli than I have thought -- because of such narrow stimuli focuses and other flaws.
Also, priming oneself is not easy for a layperson who is not familiar as such. That calculated tense-but-precised alert state -- like spear fishing -- or archery -- or hunter -- or military/defense forces -- or Olympics or such. Few people are in that "precise-tense" state the first time they play with HumanBenchmark, given the wonders of the creature of comforts of First World ownership of high end systems is often an individual who never has to worry about ever being in that precision-alertness state. I don't know what the
correct scientific terminology for this mental state is...
So I merely describe the state where you're "precision aiming like your life depended on it" without shaking in fear. It seems to be a factor to consider as this is clearly a state that many esports players are in. It's easy to overprime (too tense) and it's easy to underprime (too relaxed) -- and in many lines of aim-or-die specialties -- takes a lifetime to train oneself to prime perfectly like a professional sniper in the middle of a war -- or a medieval-era hunter lost in the woods who badly needs to aim an arrow perfectly to survive for food. More than half of historical reaction-time tests neglect this mental state that's also frequently found in esports where you can lose tens of thousands of dollars for an esports mistake, etc.
I think there is merit to doing a broader-ranging official study of this in the multi-visual-stimuli display context (esports related or otherwise), as there are many spinoff applications in other industries/organizations/etc too.