Free attention training games covering selection, inhibition and vigilance
Attention games train the ability to hold one thing in mind while ignoring everything else. This page groups the drills by the specific capacity each one loads, because 'paying attention' covers at least four separate abilities that fail independently of one another.
Picking one thing out of a busy field. Visual Search, Eagle Eye, Odd One Out, Odd Shape and Letter Hunt all load it.
The difference between good and poor performers is search method, not eyesight: systematic row-by-row scanning finds targets that random hunting misses, and it finds them faster.
Stopping a response that has already started. Go/No-Go is the standard laboratory measure and Stroop is the classic interference task; Red Alert, Color Match and Balloon Pop are gentler versions of the same idea.
This is the capacity most people mean when they say they cannot concentrate, and it is the one most clearly degraded by tiredness.
Staying alert when nothing is happening. Radar Scan and Blink Test both expose the vigilance decrement — the decline in detection performance that begins within the first few minutes of a monitoring task, and the reason watch-keeping roles rotate.
You cannot train this away. What you can do is notice when it is happening and structure your work around it.
Remove the interruption before training the attention. The evidence on interruption costs is far stronger than the evidence on attention training, and a phone in another room does more than any drill here.
Check your sleep. Inhibition is measurably worse when tired and Go/No-Go false alarms are one of the most sensitive markers of it.
Use structure. Focus Timer is a Pomodoro timer rather than a game, and for most people a fixed block of protected time does more for a day's work than any amount of practice.
The decline in detection performance over time on a monitoring task. It starts within the first few minutes, which is why roles that require sustained watching rotate people regularly.
Yes — free, instant, no signup and no download.
The Stroop Test. It produces an effect you can feel within three trials, and it is the single most studied measure of attentional control there is.
Some people find them useful as practice. They are not a treatment and not a diagnostic tool, and no score here means anything clinically.