Pattern Flash: Remembering a Picture, Not a Sequence

Pattern Flash shows you a grid where some squares light up for a moment. Then they vanish, and you rebuild the pattern. Order does not matter, only which squares were lit.

How to play

Watch the squares that light up. Then tap the same squares, in any order. Each level adds a square and the grid grows. Three wrong taps in one level cost a life, and you have three lives.

Where it comes from

Psychologists use visual pattern tests where people see a grid with some cells filled in and then reproduce it. In 1999, Sergio Della Sala and colleagues showed that memory for static patterns can be separated from memory for sequences of locations, like the Corsi blocks. Some patients were impaired on one but not the other.

What the task uses

Visual memory: holding the whole image for a few seconds. Many people remember the pattern as a shape, such as an L or a zig-zag, which is a form of chunking.

What practice can change

You will get better at this task with practice. Benefits outside the task have not been shown.

A worked example

Say five squares light up on a 4 × 4 grid, forming something like an L with one extra square. Instead of remembering five separate places, remember "an L shape in the left half, plus one square top-right". When you rebuild it, place the shape first, then the extra square.

Common mistakes

Starting to tap before the picture has settled in your mind leads to wrong taps. Trying to remember an order, when order does not matter here, wastes effort. And on later levels, rushing to finish within the time can cost lives.

Questions people ask

How is this different from Light Sequence? Pattern Flash is about which squares were lit; Light Sequence is about the order they lit in. Research suggests these rely on partly different kinds of memory.

Why does the grid grow? Bigger grids make each square harder to place.

Does practice help? Yes, at this task.

Tips

Try to see the lit squares as one shape. Not medical advice.