Every Creyos Task Explained: What Each Puzzle Measures

Creyos is a set of short computer puzzles, each about two to three minutes long, that clinicians use to measure memory, attention, reasoning and verbal ability and compare you with people your age (the complete Creyos guide covers the rest). This page goes one level deeper: for each of the 12 core tasks and the SART, what you will actually see, what a hard trial feels like, which thinking skill it is built to measure, and which classic psychology test it grew out of. Knowing the format won’t raise your score, but it takes the surprise out of the session.

How the battery is organized

Creyos describes its library as 12 online tasks in four domains. A clinician can assign all 12, which takes about 40 minutes, or a shorter subset chosen for a particular question. The ADHD protocol, for example, uses four core tasks plus the SART and runs about 20 to 25 minutes. The table below is our own summary of all 13.

Two design choices matter for how the session feels. First, the untimed tasks are adaptive: get one right and the next is bigger; miss and it steps back down, until enough misses end the task. Second, the problems are generated fresh each time rather than drawn from a fixed answer key, which is one reason the format can be repeated later (see retesting with Creyos).

Short-term memory: four ways of holding information in mind

Number Ladder (formerly Monkey Ladder)

A scatter of boxes appears, each showing a number. After a moment the numbers vanish and the boxes go blank, and you click them in counting order from memory. A hard trial has many boxes spread unevenly across the screen, so you are remembering both a sequence and a map. Creyos labels the skill visuospatial working memory. The task has an odd claim to fame: chimpanzees have been tested on versions of it, and some outperform university students.

Spatial Span

A grid of squares lights up one square at a time; when the sequence ends, you tap the same squares in the same order. Each success adds one more square. It is a screen version of the Corsi block test, in which an examiner tapped wooden blocks and the patient copied the order. Because there are no numbers or words to rehearse under your breath, it leans on memory for locations rather than language.

Paired Associates

Boxes open one after another, each revealing a small object, then close. Next the objects reappear one at a time in the center and you point to the box each one was hiding in. The number of boxes grows as you succeed. This is a test of episodic memory, the kind you use to recall where you parked or which drawer holds the spare keys.

Token Search

You click boxes to search for a hidden token. Once you find it in a box, the token will never appear in that box again, so with each round you have to remember which boxes are already “used” and search only the rest. Errors come from re-checking a box you already searched. Larger puzzles have more boxes. It measures working memory in the strict sense: not only holding information but updating it as the situation changes. Its older research name was self-ordered search.

Reasoning: rules, plans, rotations and shapes

Odd One Out

Nine small panels appear, each containing shapes that vary in color, form and how many there are. One panel breaks the pattern the other eight share; your job is to find it. Early puzzles are easy (one red panel among blue ones). Later ones require you to weigh two or three features at once. It descends from the abstract-reasoning items in classic intelligence tests and runs on a three-minute clock.

Spatial Planning

A tree-shaped frame holds numbered beads on its branches. You rearrange them into numerical order using as few moves as you can. The skill is thinking several moves ahead instead of shuffling by trial and error. It updates the Tower of London and Tower of Hanoi puzzles, which have been used to study planning since the 1970s, and it also has a three-minute limit. Creyos uses it in the ADHD protocol as one of the executive-function tasks.

Rotations

Two grids of colored squares sit side by side. Would they match if you could turn one of them? You answer same or different, and correct answers add more squares, making the patterns harder to hold and turn in your head. It traces back to 1970s experiments showing that people take longer to compare objects the further one is rotated, as if physically turning a mental image.

Polygons

One panel shows two overlapping shapes; the other shows a single shape. Is the single shape exactly one of the overlapping pair, or slightly off? The differences get subtler as you go. Paper screening tests have long asked people to copy a pair of interlocking pentagons; Polygons turns that idea into a timed visual-comparison task.

Concentration: blocking distraction and spotting differences

Double Trouble

This is the task most people remember. A color word appears at the top, printed in an ink color that may not match the word, and two color words appear underneath. You pick the bottom word that names the ink color of the top word. If the top says GREEN in blue ink, the right answer is BLUE, and your reading habit pulls the other way. That pull is the Stroop effect. Creyos adds a twist: the answer words can also be printed in conflicting colors, so there are layers of interference to suppress. It measures response inhibition, the brake that stops an automatic response.

Feature Match

Two boxes, each filled with abstract shapes, appear side by side, and you decide whether they are identical or differ somewhere. The arrays grow as you improve, so it stays challenging. Think of it as a timed spot-the-difference game that demands steady, focused attention. Feature Match is part of the ADHD protocol.

Verbal ability: numbers in order and tricky sentences

Digit Span

Digits flash up one at a time. When the sequence ends, you enter them in the same order. Get it right and the next string is one digit longer. Digit span has appeared in intelligence and neuropsychological batteries for generations, and although it uses numbers, it depends on remembering things in sequence, the way you hold a phone number long enough to dial it. That is why Creyos files it under verbal short-term memory.

Grammatical Reasoning

A sentence sits above two shapes, for example a statement about which shape is bigger, sometimes phrased with a double negative. You decide, quickly, whether the sentence is true for the picture. Speed and accuracy both count within a 90-second window. Versions of this sentence-checking test date to 1968, when it was designed to pick up subtle changes in thinking, and it remains a compact measure of verbal reasoning.

The SART: the 13th task, used only in the ADHD protocol

The Sustained Attention to Response Task is not part of the standard 12. Creyos makes it available only inside its ADHD protocol. Digits from 1 to 9 appear one at a time, and you press a key or tap a button for every number except 3. Because 3 is rare, pressing becomes automatic, and the task measures how often attention slips: pressing on a 3, missing a non-3, or responding with uneven speed. It runs 225 trials and takes about six minutes.

The SART was created by Ian Robertson and colleagues in 1997 to capture everyday lapses, the kind of slip where you pour milk into coffee you ordered black. In the ADHD report it contributes four of the 14 markers. Those markers inform an ADHD-focused cognitive assessment; they do not settle the diagnosis, which still comes from a full ADHD evaluation with history and collateral information.

How a task turns into a score

For the untimed tasks, the raw score is roughly the average size of the problems you solved. Say you correctly repeated strings of four, five and six digits, missed a seven, then repeated six again before two misses ended the task: your raw score is the average of the strings you got right, not the longest one. Averaging this way smooths out a single lucky or unlucky trial. Timed tasks are scored on how well you do within the fixed window.

The raw score is then compared with people of your age group in the normative database (more than 85,000 people) and converted to a standard score where 100 is average. How to read a Creyos report walks through standard scores, percentile ranges and the validity flag. If you want background on the skills themselves, see our explainers on working memory, processing speed and executive function testing.

Getting a fair result: practical tips

• Use a laptop or desktop (a wired mouse helps) or a tablet at least 8 inches across. Creyos’s help center says phones are not recommended.
• Pick a quiet room and silence notifications. Several tasks are timed, and a buzzing phone costs real seconds.
• Read each instruction screen fully. Misunderstood rules are one of the main reasons a result gets flagged as possibly invalid.
• Don’t write anything down. Jotting digits on paper creates unusual response patterns, and the report may mark the task invalid.
• Expect to miss trials. Adaptive tasks keep getting harder until you do, so everyone ends on errors.
• Ask before the day about medication and caffeine: your clinician will tell you whether to take your usual medication that morning.

Whether you take Creyos at home through a link or in our Arlington office, and the fee, are confirmed when you book; ask our team. Our what-to-expect guide covers the day itself, and preparing for a psychiatric evaluation covers the visit around it.

What these puzzles are, and are not

Creyos is registered and listed with the FDA as a Class II, 510(k)-exempt computerized cognitive assessment aid; it is not FDA-cleared or approved and does not diagnose any condition. The federal regulation for this device type says such aids do not identify the presence or absence of a diagnosis. Creyos is also not neuropsychological testing: a neuropsychological evaluation is a much longer battery, given and interpreted by a psychologist, and Willow & Stone does not provide it (see psychiatric versus psychological evaluation).

At Willow & Stone, Dr. Stacey Forbes, DNP, APRN, PMHNP-BC, reviews Creyos results with you as one part of a clinical evaluation. Which tasks or protocol you will be given is decided by your clinician; ask our team if you’d like to know in advance, or request a consultation.

Common Questions

Sources & Further Reading

• Creyos — Online cognitive tasks (overview of the 12 tasks)
• Creyos — Number Ladder task page (previously Monkey Ladder)
• Creyos — Spatial Planning task page
• Creyos — Double Trouble task page
• Creyos — Interpreting Creyos Health Cognitive Assessment Results (PDF)
• Creyos — ADHD Clinical Protocol and Report Interpretation Guide (PDF)
• Creyos — Understanding the Creyos Health Normative Database (PDF)
• eCFR — 21 CFR 882.1470, computerized cognitive assessment aid

This article is general education, not a diagnosis or advice for your situation. Creyos results support, and never replace, a clinical evaluation; only a clinician who has evaluated you can diagnose a condition or recommend treatment. Do not start, stop, or change a medication without talking to the clinician who prescribes it.