How the Direction level works
Arctic Shores describes this task only briefly, in a help article for candidates who get stuck. When you reach the level called Direction you press one of two keys depending on which way the arrow is pointing: Q when the arrow in the centre points left, P when it points right.
The same article explains the most common problem. Candidates who click the icons with a mouse can find the task does not move on, so use the Q and P keys. If your presses still do not register, Arctic Shores recommends switching to a different device and checking its list of supported devices and browsers.
The keys appear before Direction too. Arctic Shores’ practice task, available before the assessment starts, asks you to press Q when a lightbulb appears in the box and P when a cog appears, so the two keys should already feel familiar.
Why “the arrow in the centre” matters
Arctic Shores’ wording, the arrow “in the centre”, matches a classic attention experiment, the flanker task, first used by Eriksen and Eriksen in 1974. In its arrow version a target arrow appears with other arrows either side. When they all point the same way the trial is called congruent; when the flankers point the opposite way it is incongruent. Responses are fastest on congruent trials and slowest on incongruent ones, and incongruent trials draw out fast errors.
Arctic Shores has not said that Direction is a flanker task, what surrounds the centre arrow, or what the task measures. It says its tasks are built on research methods from cognitive neuroscience and behavioural science, and that it “can’t spill all our secrets” about what each one measures. Treat the flanker comparison as ours.
How it is scored
Arctic Shores does not publish how Direction is scored, how many arrows you see or how long each stays on screen. Its help centre says the employer chooses which tasks you take, that you unlock them one at a time, and that your results are compared with a norm group of similar people who have taken the assessment before.
Its advice on approach is short: there is no right or wrong way to approach the tasks, so complete each one in the way that feels most natural. If sustained concentration is hard for you, its adjustments guide suggests selecting ADHD from its list, which can bring scoring adjustments or extra time. Adjustments have to be declared before you begin, because they cannot be added once the assessment has started.
How our practice version works
Our Arrows game uses the same Q and P keys, with on-screen buttons for phones. It runs 80 trials. Each shows five symbols in a row, or that row repeated as a block of three, and you answer with the direction of the middle arrow within 700 milliseconds. The surrounding symbols are arrows, dashes or crosses; when they are arrows, they point the same way as the middle one on about half of trials.
Two rules are ours, not Arctic Shores’: a row of crosses means do not press at all, and a press under 100 milliseconds counts as too early. You get feedback after every trial. Our score out of 100 combines accuracy, speed, how steady your response times are and how you handle runs of errors. Arctic Shores has published none of these details, so use the game to get used to answering the centre arrow under time pressure, not as a model of the real scoring.