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Attention Spotlight Simulator

Run the Attention Spotlight Simulator Fullscreen

Place the following line in your website to include this MicroSim in your course:

<iframe src="https://arunbatchu.github.io/adhd/sims/attention-spotlight-simulator/main.html" height="482px" scrolling="no"></iframe>

Description

This MicroSim puts you in the operator's seat of the attention spotlight from Chapter 1. Your mouse steers the beam. The task is simple and boring on purpose: keep the beam on the green-ringed target ("The form") for sixty seconds while distractors — the phone, the TV, chatter — pulse and try to grab it. When a pulsing distractor captures the beam, it sticks for two seconds before you can pull away, and a caption names what happened.

The controls model the chapter's vocabulary directly:

  • Time on target measures sustaining attention
  • Captures measure resisting capture
  • Task switch mode moves the target every fifteen seconds and measures your shift cost
  • The Distraction slider raises the environment's load — same task, same effort, harder steering

Raising the distraction level models what a higher-ADHD-load environment feels like: the task never changed, but holding it got harder.

Lesson Plan

  1. Predict (2 min): Before running, have learners guess their time-on-target percentage at distraction level 5.
  2. Run (2 min): One 60-second session at level 5. Compare the result to the prediction.
  3. Manipulate (3 min): Repeat at distraction 0 and distraction 10. Discuss: what changed — the person, or the environment?
  4. Extend (3 min): Turn on task switch mode. Discuss why the moments after each switch feel expensive, and connect to transition struggles at home.
  5. Debrief (2 min): Map each on-screen number to the chapter's skill names: sustaining, resisting capture, shifting.

References