Executive Function
Match or Mirror Game
Also called: rule switching game for children, touch executive function game
Measure how well children aged 6 to 12 hold two rules in mind and switch between them. A leaf is answered on its own place, a kite on the other, and then the two come mixed.
5-7 minTimed: desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Try it here first, with no account.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 13
- Evidence grade
- C
- Registered clinical studies
- 10
Figures for the Hearts and Flowers Task, the published test this game is compared with.
How these are countedWhat it measures
A game for research on holding two rules in mind and switching between them in children aged 6 to 12, with an adult reading the screens aloud to children under 8. A leaf or a kite appears in one of two places. For a leaf, the player taps its own place. For a kite, the player taps the other, empty place. The score is accuracy in the mixed block. It is a raw research measure with no percentile.
Constructs
- Cognitive flexibility
- Holding rules in mind
- Inhibitory control
Research uses
- Research on holding two rules in mind and switching between them in school-age children
How the paradigm works
The Match or Mirror Game is a game for research on holding two rules in mind and switching between them in children aged 6 to 12. A leaf or a kite appears in one of two places on the screen, left or right, and the child touches a place, or presses F for the left or J for the right on a computer. For a leaf the answer is the leaf's own place. For a kite it is the other place, the empty one. The places are the touch targets, so the child touches the screen where the picture is or where it is not, and no button is needed. Three blocks come in a fixed order: leaves only, kites only, then both mixed (Davidson and colleagues 2006, Neuropsychologia). Each block opens with 4 practice pictures with the right place glowing, and the practice runs once more when fewer than 3 are right. The pictures, the places, the start of each trial, the forms and the words are our own.
More about the paradigm
The paper counts and grades on this page are those of the Hearts and Flowers Task, the published test the game is compared with, not the game's own. The picture stays until the answer or the picture time, which the study fixes for the whole run: 750 ms, used from age 7 into adulthood, or 1,500 ms for children of 6 and younger (Wright and Diamond 2014). Each picture time is its own scale, so a score is read against scores at the same picture time. A tap or key before the picture appears is counted and changes nothing. A press sooner than 200 ms after the picture answers nothing and leaves the trial out of the scores. So do a second finger or a palm, a hidden tab, and a window that changed size or turned. Each session takes one of 2 forms, the second the first with every side swapped. Each participant gets the forms in an order drawn once for them, and each session takes the next form. A form's scores are pooled with the other's only after first sessions show the two are equally hard.
Scores
- Mixed-Block Accuracy%
- Share of the scored mixed-block trials answered on the right side within the picture time. A miss or the wrong side is an error. A trial with an early tap, a second contact, a hidden tab or a resized window is left out.
- Higher means more right answers when both rules are mixed; read on the scale of its picture time within a study
- Leaf Block Accuracy%
- Share of the scored leaf-block trials answered on the leaf's own place within the picture time.
- Secondary: the easy block, for context
- Kite Block Accuracy%
- Share of the scored kite-block trials answered on the other place within the picture time.
- Secondary: the other single-rule block, for context
- Mixed-Block Median Timems
- Median time from a picture's appearance to a right answer in the mixed block.
- Informational
- Switch Cost%
- Accuracy on repeat trials less accuracy on switch trials in the mixed block. A repeat shows the same picture as the trial before, a switch the other picture.
- Positive means trials that switched the picture were answered less often right
- Picture Timems
- How long each picture stayed in this run, which was also the time to answer.
- Informational: each picture time is its own scale
- Valid Trialscount
- Test trials that were scored, out of 80. A trial is left out when it had an early tap, a second contact, a hidden tab or a resized window.
- Quality check
- Share of Key Answers%
- Share of the scored answers given with the F or J key.
- Informational: the touch-versus-keyboard comparison reads it
- Share of Touch Answers%
- Share of the scored answers given by a touch of a place.
- Informational: the touch-versus-keyboard comparison reads it
Use and evidence
13 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract. That ranks it 565 of 632 test families in our census. These counts belong to the Hearts and Flowers Task, the published test this game is compared with. This game is a new measure, so its own reliability and norms come from use. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 4 |
| 2024 | 3 |
| 2023 | 3 |
| 2022 | 2 |
| 2021 | 1 |
| 2020 | 0 |
| 2019 | 2 |
| 2018 | 0 |
| 2017 | 1 |
| 2016 | 0 |
| 2015 | 1 |
| 2014 | 2 |
| 2013 | 0 |
| 2012 | 0 |
| 2011 | 0 |
| 2010 | 1 |
| 2009 | 1 |
| 2008 | 0 |
| 2007 | 0 |
| 2006 | 0 |
| 2005 | 0 |
| 2004 | 0 |
| 2003 | 0 |
| 2002 | 0 |
| 2001 | 0 |
| 2000 | 0 |
Use grade E
Fewer than 30 papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade C
At least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 0
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 2
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 10
Measured on ConductCognition
Pooled across the studies that feed our platform norms, by device group. A figure needs 50 or more people.
No pooled figure yet.
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on the Hearts and Flowers Task, the published test this game is compared with, not the game's own.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.44.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Pictures
- A leaf and a kite drawn in code, each mirror-symmetric, with areas within 10% of each other. They differ in outline and in lightness, so no color vision is needed. The game look adds a soft background and a soft shadow under the places; the plain look shows them on white. Both looks draw every picture the same way.
- Places
- Two places, left and right of an empty middle, are the touch targets: the child touches the screen where the picture is or where it is not, and no button is needed. Each place is at least 120 by 96 px and each picture at least 96 px. The layout is worked out from the window before each trial, and a turned screen refits before the next one.
- Blocks
- Three blocks in a fixed order: the leaf block (touch the leaf's own place), the kite block (touch the other, empty place), then both mixed. 20, 20 and 40 trials, with a rest after 20 mixed trials. Each block opens with 4 practice pictures with the right place glowing for 800 ms, and the practice runs once more when fewer than 3 are right.
- Trial
- Both places stay empty for 1,000 ms, then the picture shows in its place and stays until the answer or the picture time, then a 500 ms gap follows. The study sets the picture time for the whole run: 750 ms, used from age 7, or 1,500 ms for children of 6 and younger. Test trials show no feedback.
- Answers
- The first touch of a place, or a press of F for the left or J for the right on a computer, answers. A tap or key before the picture appears is counted and changes nothing. A press sooner than 200 ms after the picture answers nothing and leaves the trial out. So do a second finger or a palm, a hidden tab, and a window that changed size or turned. A held key answers once.
- Forms
- 2 alternate forms, the second the first with every side swapped, each with exactly 19 switches and 20 repeats in the mixed block. Each participant gets the forms in an order drawn once for them, and each session takes the next form.
- Scores
- Accuracy in the mixed block within the picture time (the main score), accuracy in the two one-rule blocks, the median time of the right answers in the mixed block, the switch cost, the picture time, the number of scored trials and the shares of answers given by key and by touch. A miss and the wrong side are errors. Each picture time is its own scale.
- Devices
- Desktops and laptops at release. Tablets open once two filmed tablets pass the device timing check, and phones do not run the game. For a child under 8, an adult sits beside the child and reads each screen aloud and does not answer for the child.
The design follows the Hearts and Flowers format of Davidson and colleagues (2006) and its timing (Wright and Diamond 2014); the pictures, the places, the touch answer, the forms, the words and the looks are our own. This is a new measure for research with children aged 6 to 12: its reliability and norms come from use, the figures published in those studies are not its own, and it computes no percentiles. Many ways to score the task are published (Wu and colleagues 2024), so the export holds each block's accuracy and response times for a study that wants another rule. A practice visit before the baseline is advised, and for a retest 7 to 28 days later, add a second visit to the same study.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: match_or_mirror_game test trials in the three blocks, left or right (chance 50%) within the picture time, with the right side taken from the form's table. A trial with a second contact, a hidden tab, a resized window or an early tap is left out. Below chance invalidates and not above chance is flagged. One side on 90% of answers invalidates when accuracy is not above chance. More than 3 missed responses and more than a quarter of the responses invalidate, and any missed response is flagged. 10 or more of the 80 trials with an early tap are flagged. Fewer than 30 of the 40 mixed trials scored invalidates. Under 80% right in the leaf block, the easiest, is flagged and withholds the percentile.
Why these rules
Accuracy significantly below chance (one-sided exact test, p < .05) cannot come from guessing; it means the response mapping was reversed or the task was not followed (Slick, Sherman and Iverson 1999 treat below-chance forced-choice performance as definite response bias). Chance-level accuracy can be a real result in impaired participants, so it is only flagged. One option on at least 90% of answered trials, when the correct options are balanced and accuracy is not above chance, means the answers did not depend on the items (the task counterpart of long-string responding in surveys; Curran 2016). Missed responses keep the platform's timed-test rule: more than 3 and more than a quarter of the trials invalidate, and any is flagged. The timed rule's check of responses under 100 ms cannot fire here, because an answer counts only from 200 ms after the picture, so a trial with a tap or key under 200 ms is left out and 10 or more of them flag the run; the limit is a ConductScience choice. Fewer than 30 of the 40 mixed trials leave the main score too thin, also a ConductScience choice. The leaf block asks only for a press on the picture's own side, so many errors there suggest the rules were not followed; Roebers (2022) excluded children under 80% correct in the matching block of the Hearts and Flowers Task, and the limit is a ConductScience choice taken from that study.
No percentile. Scores and quality flags only.
Running this test
Settings you can change
| Setting | Standard | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Look | Game | Game, Plain |
| Picture time (ms) | 750 ms (standard) | 750 ms (standard), 1,500 ms (children of 6 and younger) |
Yearly plans can change settings within these limits. Free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Every plan can change the look, which never changes how a result is scored.
Need a setting this test does not have?
Devices and languages
- Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. Participant devices
- Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- No percentile. Scores and quality flags only. How norms work
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the Match or Mirror Game in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Davidson and colleagues, 2006), with the standard settings (look: Game; picture time (ms): 750 ms). The main score was mixed-block accuracy (share of the scored mixed-block trials answered on the right side within the picture time).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Davidson, M. C., Amso, D., Anderson, L. C., & Diamond, A. (2006). Development of cognitive control and executive functions from 4 to 13 years: Evidence from manipulations of memory, inhibition, and task switching. Neuropsychologia, 44(11), 2037-2078. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2006.02.006The format: a rule on the picture's own side, a rule on the other side, then both mixed (abstract read). The game takes the format, not the pictures.
- Wright, A., & Diamond, A. (2014). An effect of inhibitory load in children while keeping working memory load constant. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 213. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00213The picture times of 750 ms and 1,500 ms for children of 6, as the library's Hearts and Flowers files record them.
- Wu, T., Weiland, C., McCormick, M., Hsueh, J., Snow, C., & Sachs, J. (2024). One score to rule them all? Comparing the predictive and concurrent validity of 30 Hearts and Flowers scoring approaches. Assessment, 31(8), 1702-1720. https://doi.org/10.1177/10731911241229566Thirty published ways to score the task; the export holds each block's accuracy and response times so a study can use another rule (abstract read).
Source papers
Questions
How long does the Match or Mirror Game take?
About 5 to 7 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
Mixed-Block Accuracy, Leaf Block Accuracy, Kite Block Accuracy, Mixed-Block Median Time, Switch Cost, Picture Time, Valid Trials, Share of Key Answers and Share of Touch Answers. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the Hearts and Flowers Task used in research?
These counts belong to the Hearts and Flowers Task, the published test this game is compared with. This game is a new measure, so its own reliability and norms come from use. 13 papers from 2021 to 2025 name the task in their title or abstract. That ranks it 565 of 632 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade E). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.44.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the Hearts and Flowers Task have?
These counts belong to the Hearts and Flowers Task, the published test this game is compared with. This game is a new measure, so its own reliability and norms come from use. In the published research, 0 papers report the task's test-retest reliability and 10 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade C in the ConductCognition test census).
Does it report a percentile?
No. Scores and quality flags only.
Which settings can a researcher change?
Look (Game, Plain) and picture time (ms) (750 ms (standard), 1,500 ms (children of 6 and younger)). Settings can be changed on yearly plans; free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings. Every plan can change the look, which never changes how a result is scored.
Which languages can participants use?
Participants can take this test in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
Every test: the full test list.
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