What to expect
You get one dull, simple task repeated for minutes: strike out every matching pair, or mark the rows that differ. The items themselves are easy. The difficulty is staying exact when the hundredth row looks like the first.
The two task types
A strike-out task asks you to tick or cross certain targets among noise. A comparison task shows two strings, figures or rows and asks whether they match. Both punish speed that outruns attention: one missed row is one lost point, and the fast reader misses the most.
Find your own rhythm row by row and keep it. Chasing the person next to you is what turns a steady run into a run of errors.
Five strategies
- Fix a scan order, top-left to bottom-right, and never jump around.
- Say the target in your head once, then match against it, not against the row before.
- Use the pen or cursor as a guide so your eye cannot skip a line.
- When you notice drift, slow for ten seconds rather than speed up to catch it.
- Leave one last sweep for the last block instead of re-checking everything.
How to practice
Take a two-minute strike-out or comparison task and score only your errors, not your total. Repeat it two days later. When your errors hold flat while the clock runs, your accuracy has become a habit and the test stops being about nerve.
MSc Psychology, 7 years of test taking.
Last updated: Oct 27, 2026