SOMOTE has four settings that change how your phrases reach you: how long each phrase appears, how visible it is, where it appears on your screen and how often it returns. Each one is based on decades of research on repetition and exposure.
Flash length: how long each phrase appears
You can show each phrase for as little as 8 milliseconds or for as long as 5 seconds. Research shows that a word flashed for about 33 milliseconds can register even when people can’t say what they saw, and that a word shown for about 80 milliseconds or longer can be read. The studies that found lasting change used words that registered and were repeated over weeks, and a review of 214 studies led by Wilhelm Hofmann found stronger effects when people could see the words. That is why SOMOTE’s default flash, about two seconds, is long enough to read, and you can shorten it whenever you like.
Opacity: how visible each phrase is
Research on the mere exposure effect found something surprising: things people saw without consciously noticing them often grew on them more than things they noticed. Robert Bornstein’s review of 208 exposure experiments found larger liking effects for things people never consciously registered. That is why we recommend an opacity of 1 to 5 percent for all-day use. At that level, your phrases are there every time you look at your screen, but faint enough that you don’t stop to argue with them.
Position: where each phrase appears
Priming studies show the word at the point where the eyes are focused, the center of vision, because that is where a brief word is processed most fully. Words shown off to the side register weakly. So SOMOTE shows your phrases in the center of the screen, where you are looking, instead of in a corner, where people learn to ignore things.
Frequency and rotation: how often phrases return
People’s liking for something grows quickly over the first 10 to 20 times they see it and then levels off. Daniel Berlyne explained this with his two-factor theory: familiarity helps at first, and then people start to tire of seeing the same thing. Rotating several phrases keeps each one fresh. That is why SOMOTE has Playlists, a Shuffle option and a frequency setting, so a handful of phrases take turns instead of one phrase repeating endlessly.
Every setting in SOMOTE comes from this research. We read the studies on repetition and exposure closely and built the app they describe. Download SOMOTE free and try the settings yourself.