Sort Shift
Toys roll down the belt. Sort each one by colour, shape or size, as the sign says right now.
How to play
- Read the sign above the belt: it says whether to sort by colour, shape or size.
- Red, round and big toys go in the left crate; blue, square and small toys go in the right one. The crates show this, with the sign’s rule lit up.
- Tap the left or right side, swipe the toy, or press the arrow keys to send it before it rolls off the end of the belt.
- The sign can change before any toy, and a toy often belongs in different crates under different rules — only the rule on the sign counts.
- Right answers make it harder — a faster belt, more sign changes, then a third rule — and a miss eases off. Thirty-six toys make a session, and every session starts from the same easy pace.
What it trains
- Switching rules the moment the sign changes, and letting go of the one you were just using
- Ignoring everything about a toy except the one feature the sign asks for
- A belt that gets harder or easier with your answers, so each session sits at the pace you can keep
Sort Shift is a sorting game where the rule keeps changing. Toys roll down a conveyor belt toward two crates, and the sign above the belt says what to sort by: colour, shape, or later size. Red, round and big toys go left; blue, square and small toys go right — so a red square goes left while the sign says colour, and right the moment it flips to shape. Tap a side or swipe each toy into its crate before it rolls off the end. Keep up and it gets harder — a faster belt, more sign changes, then a third rule; miss one and it eases off. Thirty-six toys make a session of a couple of minutes.
The science behind it
Peer-reviewed studies this exercise draws on.
- How useful is executive control training? Age differences in near and far transfer of task-switching training Karbach & Kray (2009). Developmental Science, 12(6), 978–990.
- Making working memory work: A meta-analysis of executive-control and working memory training in older adults Karbach & Verhaeghen (2014). Psychological Science, 25(11), 2027–2037.
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