Online Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task

The Visual Approach/Avoidance by the Self Task (VAAST) was introduced by Rougier et al. (2018), with a short online version by Aubé et al. (2019). This page is a minimal adaptation of the approach/avoidance logic: it compares response times when word valence and action are compatible versus incompatible, within a single session.

A fixation cross appears for 500 ms, then a word appears. You have about two seconds to press the approach or the avoid key. Approach responses play a growing animation, avoid responses a shrinking one. The session consists of two blocks of 20 trials, and the key mapping reverses between blocks.

Per trial: the word, its valence, your response, the reaction time, and whether it was correct — all exportable as JSON or CSV. The summary measure is the congruence effect: mean reaction time in the incompatible block minus the compatible block, computed only from correct responses with a reaction time of at least 200 ms, alongside overall accuracy.

A positive value means you were, on average, faster when valence and action matched during this session. Approach–avoidance effects measured online are small, and the replicability of individual-differences findings in this literature is contested. This demo illustrates the paradigm; it does not measure stable tendencies.