Which Shape Vanished Game

About Vanishing Shapes

Vanishing Shapes shows a handful of coloured shapes scattered over a box, such as a red circle, a blue square and a green triangle. After a few seconds they are hidden. Then they come back, but one of them is missing. You choose the vanished shape from a row of buttons that show every original shape.

There are 4 shapes on the first level and 9 on the last, taken from six forms and eight colours. The display time falls from 3.4 to 1.8 seconds, and the gap before the shapes return is 0.9 seconds. Each shape is unique in colour and form, so you must remember both.

How to play

1. Look at all the shapes during the Memorize time. Try to remember each one by colour and form.
2. When the shapes come back, find out which one is not there.
3. Tap the matching button below. You can also press the number on a keyboard.
4. The result shows which one disappeared.

A group of coloured shapes is shown, then hidden. When it returns, one shape is missing. Pick the shape that vanished.

How scoring works

A right answer scores 100 and a wrong one 0, and in endless mode a right answer counts as a passed round. The answer options are all the shapes that were in the picture, so a blind guess is right 1 time in 4 on level 1 and 1 time in 9 on level 10.

The picture contains 4 shapes on level 1 and 9 on level 10, chosen from circle, square, triangle, diamond, star and hexagon in eight colours. They are placed at random with a minimum distance. You have 9 seconds to answer.

What it trains

The game trains visual working memory for objects and the binding of features, such as a colour to a shape. Binding is a key part of visual memory and is one of the first things to be affected when attention is divided.

It also trains change detection, noticing what is different, a skill you use when you see that something in your room has moved or that a colleague has changed their look.

Tips for a higher score

• Name each shape: 'red circle, blue star'. A verbal label doubles the memory trace.
• Use the layout. Remember the pattern in which the shapes were placed, not only the shapes themselves.
• Check the empty spot first. The place where nothing is now is often a cue to what was there.
• Group by colour or by form: 'two triangles, three round ones'. Missing items break the pattern.
• If you cannot decide, pick the shape that you remember the least well, since it is most likely the one you did not look at.

The idea behind it

Change detection tasks, introduced into memory research by Steven Luck and Edward Vogel in 1997, show that people can hold about three to four objects in visual working memory, and that this capacity applies to whole objects with several features, not to single features. Remembering a coloured shape costs as much as remembering a colour only.

At the same time, memory for the binding of features is fragile. Studies by Brad Wyble and others find that bindings are lost more easily than single features when attention is divided, which is why the game uses combinations of shapes and colours.

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Free, no account. Your best scores are saved on your device.