Average reaction time by age

Tap the box, wait for green, and tap again, five times. Then type your age to see the average for your age group in the largest study below. This is a simple reflex test for fun, not a medical test.

What the studies found

Researchers measure simple reaction time the same way this test does: one signal, one response, as fast as you can. The best recent data I found comes from a study of 1,469 adults aged 18 to 65 who pressed a mouse button when a target flashed on a screen.

The youngest group averaged 217.9 ms and the oldest 239.1 ms. That's 21.2 ms slower across more than 40 years, about half a millisecond a year. The paper itself reports a slope of 0.55 ms a year, and found no significant difference between men and women. The age groups are printed as they appear in the paper, where the sixth one starts at 51.

Two older studies point the same way:

• The Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging tested 1,265 volunteers aged 17 to 96 with a sound as the signal. From about age 20, simple reaction time slowed by roughly 0.5 ms a year. In this study the men were faster than the women.
• The UK Health and Lifestyle Survey reanalysis covered over 7,000 adults. It found that simple reaction time shows little slowing until around 50, while choice reaction time, where you pick between several responses, slows across the whole adult age range.

So the studies agree on the main point, a slow and small change with age, and differ on the details, such as whether men are faster and when the slowing starts.

Why your result here may be slower

A browser test measures your reaction plus the time your screen takes to show the green and your mouse, keyboard or touchscreen takes to report the tap. The 2015 study measured that delay for its own equipment at 17.8 ms on average, and its table includes it. Phones, laptops and wireless mice all add different amounts.

That's why the fairest comparison is with yourself: the same device, the same browser, a few runs on different days. Small differences between people, a few milliseconds either way, say very little.

Simple and choice reaction time

This page and the table above are about simple reaction time: you know what's coming and there's one right response. Choice reaction time adds a decision, like pressing left for one color and right for another. It's slower, and both older studies found that it slows more with age than simple reaction time does. In the Baltimore study, a go or no go task slowed by about 1.6 ms a year, against 0.5 ms for the simple one.

Getting a steady result

• Use a wired mouse or a keyboard if you can, and keep using the same one.
• Do a practice run first, so you're used to the timing before you count a result.
• Watch the box, not the numbers. Guessing usually ends in a too early.

Questions

Sources

• Woods DL, Wyma JM, Yund EW, Herron TJ, Reed B (2015). Factors influencing the latency of simple reaction time. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 9:131. DOI link, free to read on PubMed Central. The age table above is its Table 2, Experiment 1.
• Fozard JL, Vercruyssen M, Reynolds SL, Hancock PA, Quilter RE (1994). Age differences and changes in reaction time: the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging. Journal of Gerontology 49(4):P179 to P189. DOI link, abstract on one author's site.
• Der G, Deary IJ (2006). Age and sex differences in reaction time in adulthood: results from the United Kingdom Health and Lifestyle Survey. Psychology and Aging 21(1):62 to 73. DOI link, record at the University of Edinburgh.

Reaction Time
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