How the ATAVT test works
ATAVT is part of Schuhfried’s Vienna Test System. RSSB’s standard uses it for perception and, together with WAFV, for reaction time.
A picture of a traffic situation appears briefly, reported as about one second, then disappears. You then pick which of five options were in it, such as vehicles, pedestrians and traffic lights. Some of the options will not have been in the picture.
The test is adaptive: difficulty adjusts to how you are doing. Schuhfried offers a form with left-hand traffic, as in the UK, and its newer ATAVT-2 uses computer-generated scenes with pictograms beside the answer options.
How to take in a scene at a glance
A second is too short to look at things one by one, so change how you look:
- Fix your eyes on the centre of the screen before the picture appears, so the whole scene is in view at once.
- Take a snapshot, not a search. Let the scene land as a whole and trust what comes back on the answer screen.
- Go through the options in the same order every time and ask “was it there?” for each one.
- Tick only what you actually saw. Guessing at things that might have been there adds errors.
- Let a missed scene go. The next one is a fresh start.
Worked example
Take five options: pedestrians, vehicles, bicycles or motorbikes, traffic lights and traffic signs. A scene shows a junction with a car waiting at a red light, a cyclist beside it and a speed limit sign on a post. The pavement is empty.
The answer is vehicles, bicycles or motorbikes, traffic lights and traffic signs. Pedestrians stays unticked, even though a busy junction often has them.
Tips for the real ATAVT
- Practise quick glimpses: glance at a street scene or photo for a second, look away, then list what was in it.
- Wear your glasses or lenses if you need them for screens.
- Ask about anything unclear during the instructions. Once the test starts you cannot.
- Expect it to feel hard. An adaptive test keeps raising the difficulty while you are doing well.
Practise ATAVT on CogniPrep
Our ATAVT shows 16 computer-drawn UK traffic scenes, with traffic on the left, each for one second before a grey pattern covers it. You then tick which of five categories you saw: pedestrians, motor vehicles, bicycles or motorbikes, traffic lights and traffic signs, with no time limit on answering. Scenes move up and down eight difficulty levels of our own as you get them right or wrong, and your score out of 100 comes from the level you settle at over the last eight scenes. Schuhfried’s photographs and scoring are its own.