Flanker Task

The flanker task, introduced by Eriksen and Eriksen (1974), presents a central target stimulus surrounded by flanking stimuli that are either response-compatible (pointing the same direction) or response-incompatible (pointing the opposite direction). The core dependent measure is the flanker interference effect: the RT and accuracy cost of incompatible flankers relative to compatible ones. Smaller interference effects indicate stronger selective attention and inhibitory control, whereas larger effects indicate that the flanking stimuli are capturing attentional resources that should be directed at the target.

Reference: Eriksen & Eriksen, 1974. The NeuroRank implementation holds the canonical form and scales interference via task-irrelevant stimulus density.

1. Responding to a target enemy in the centre of the screen while allied health bars, kill-feed notifications, and ability icons flank the target and compete for visual processing.
2. Executing an ability rotation in League of Legends while three simultaneous UI elements update around the target cursor, pulling peripheral attention toward the wrong action.
3. Holding a crosshair on a peeking target in Valorant while flashbang residual glare and a teammate crossing the right side of the screen generate competing motor cues.

NeuroRank's Composure module is a calibrated flanker task. Two phases run in sequence: a compatible-flanker baseline and an incompatible-flanker distraction phase. The Composure dimension score is derived from how much RT and accuracy degrade when flankers flip to incompatible. A higher score reflects a smaller interference effect and stronger real-world composure under visual distraction.