Arctic Shores-style task practice

Up to 9 tasks; the first one or two may be timed; breaks are allowed between tasks; a practice task comes first

Source · From the vendor’s candidate guidance. The vendor’s Help Centre was not readable, so task names and counts come from the sources below.

Each behaviour is shown on a 1 to 10 spectrum against a norm group, and there is no better or worse

Source

Each trait gets a sten (1 to 10). The employer’s target profile gives a target range per trait plus danger zones, and a sten of 10 is not always the best

Source · Vendor sample report hosted by Newcastle University careers.

Fit combines how close each sten is to its target range, weighted by how important the trait is for the role, then becomes a percentile against a norm group

Source · Kvanta shows the same method with a role it made up and percentiles only against Kvanta players.

The vendor does not publish which task feeds which trait, or its scoring models and norm tables

Source · So every game-to-trait link in Kvanta’s report is Kvanta’s own inference, and the reference values are provisional.

Aptitude tasks give partial credit, and tasks use no language

Source

Aptitude percentiles are reported in three bands: below the 30th, 30th to 50th, above the 50th

Source · Kvanta shows these bands only against Kvanta players, once 30 or more people have played.

Retaking reasoning tests gains about a quarter of a standard deviation, mostly over the first few sittings

Source · Hausknecht et al. 2007. The report says practice raises reasoning scores.

A scales-and-shapes puzzle appears in a pilot battery

Candidate report in Kvanta’s research brief. No public link.

10 puzzles in 10 minutes with adaptive difficulty

Counts are from the research brief. The five-level staircase, the shapes and the puzzle generator are Kvanta’s own; each puzzle has exactly one balancing option, checked by brute force.

Balloon: pump and bank; about 45 balloons

Source

Balloon, Leaflets and Power are named in press coverage of the vendor’s older tasks

Source · Press coverage, quoting candidates.

Balloon Analogue Risk Task: bursts uniformly between 1 and the ceiling; adjusted average pumps on balloons that did not burst

Source · Lejuez et al. 2002. Kvanta’s three balloon types have ceilings of 128, 64 and 32 pumps.

Retest reliability of the balloon task is about .77 with no average change, so practice barely moves it

Source · White, Lejuez and de Wit 2008.

Balloons of different types burst after different numbers of pumps

Prep sites say colours may differ in risk. Kvanta marks types by pattern and label, never by colour alone.

A battery has up to 9 tasks and takes about 15 to 25 minutes, with a practice task first and breaks between tasks

Source · Task count and the practice task are in the vendor’s guidance. Kvanta’s nine tasks and their order are its own pick from the reported games.

Results from the real assessment last about 9 to 12 months; the vendor advises against retaking within a year

Source · Press quoting the vendor. The sample reports state the 9 to 12 months.

Sten scores per trait against an example role: a role Kvanta made up, with target ranges, danger zones and importance weights

Source · Method from the vendor’s sample report. The role itself is not any employer’s.

Arrows / Direction: report the centre arrow and ignore the others; 80 to 85 trials, about 2 minutes, and it speeds up

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A task is done under varying pressure

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Flanker task: congruent versus incongruent side arrows

Source · Eriksen and Eriksen 1974.

Cued rule switching: switch cost in time and errors

Source · Rogers and Monsell 1995.

85 rounds, 30 on the middle rule then mixed rules, a window shrinking from 2.0 to 1.1 seconds, 6 practice rounds

The trial count and speeding up are reported. The rule switches, window values and practice rounds are Kvanta’s own design.

Power Generator: press buttons; some generators add power and some drain it; learn the pattern

Source

Learning Agility task: speed of learning, use of feedback and transfer to a new problem (mechanics not disclosed)

Source · Kvanta’s second round with new symbols is a stand-in for transfer.

Multi-option reward learning: choose among options with different average payoffs

Source · The standard bandit paradigm (for example Daw et al. 2006).

Learning games re-randomise which choices are good every session, because a fixed layout teaches the answer and changes what is measured

Source · Sullivan-Toole et al. on practice effects in the Iowa Gambling Task. Kvanta applies the same rule to Energy and Predict.

Two rounds of 30 choices, three panels that add power and three that drain it

The structure is Kvanta’s own design. Which panels are good, and where they sit, is drawn at random every session.

Emotions: name the facial emotion; 50 rounds, about 3 minutes

Source

Forced-choice emotion recognition scored with the unbiased hit rate

Source · Wagner 1993.

Faces are synthetic and the 7 emotions are anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, surprise and neutral

Seven emotions is from the research brief. Faces are Kvanta’s own synthetic images.

Security door: stop a spinning dial on a target; up to 15 rounds; candidates report a final level they could not complete

Source

What is measured is what a person does after failing, not whether they succeed

This is Kvanta’s inference from the reported unwinnable level. How the vendor scores it is not public.

15 doors, a speed that changes every door, a 4-minute limit, a locked door at door 8, 9 or 10

Up to 15 rounds is reported. The speeds, zone sizes, time limit and locked-door position are Kvanta’s own design.

Order: drag a shape into the frame, then set its size, rotation and position with a toolbar; about 17 minutes

Candidate report in Kvanta’s research brief. Colour is replaced by fill pattern because the Kvanta palette is black and white.

Patterns / Order: three frames, then the fourth

Source

12 series, five difficulty levels set by how many properties change

The duration is reported. The count of 12 and the rule family (steps that wrap round) are Kvanta’s own design; every series has one correct frame, checked in code.

A prediction task appears in the vendor’s task set, but its mechanics are not published

Low confidence. Candidate reports in Kvanta’s research brief only. This is a standard probabilistic task, not a copy.

Probabilistic cue-outcome learning

Source · Knowlton, Squire and Gluck 1994 (weather prediction task) for the paradigm.

48 rounds, three cues that point to outcome A about 80, 50 and 20 percent of the time, with a flip after round 30

Kvanta’s own design. The cue-to-probability mapping is re-drawn every session.

Sequence / Leaflets: repeat the order in which tiles light up

Source

A tiles task with distractors appears in a pilot battery

Candidate report in Kvanta’s research brief. No public link.

Corsi block-tapping span: sequence length rises by one after each success; two misses at a length end the part

Source · Kessels et al. 2000. Start length 3, longest 9, in two parts (plain, then with decoys) are Kvanta’s design.

Team Selling: choose a high or low price; payoff depends on your team’s and the rival team’s choices; 12 rounds

Source

Repeated social dilemma with conditional cooperators and free riders

Source · Fehr and Gachter 2000 for the mix of player types.

Payoffs: 3 points per high-pricing teammate, 1 per high-pricing rival, 4 for pricing low. Computer firms use a documented random mix of strategies

The payoff table and the strategy mix (40% conditional, 20% mirror, 15% always high, 15% always low, 10% random) are Kvanta’s own design and are shown in the report.

Tickets: sort 80 tickets by number or shape in 2 minutes

Source

Rule switching and perseveration are the standard measures of this kind of task

Source · Rogers and Monsell 1995.

The rule is shown for the first 24 tickets, then hidden; it changes every 8 shown tickets and every 12 to 16 hidden tickets

Shown-then-hidden is from the research brief. The exact schedule is Kvanta’s own design.