KLM Flight Academy

Phase 2: Sensorimotor Tests (SMO)

Lesson 4 of 6•2 min read•5 exercises

The SMO (Sensomotorisch Onderzoek) measures whether your hands, feet and eyes cooperate under rising workload: the raw coordination layer of flying an aircraft. It consists of five assessments organised into three parts, with short breaks in between.

The three parts

Part 1 — Hand-eye coordination: steering through a course with two joysticks, simulating aircraft control; followed by multitasking and stress resilience, where several information sources must be processed as the workload keeps rising.
Part 2 — Complex choice reaction with deviation detection: recognising patterns quickly and responding the moment something deviates; followed by spatial reasoning, a three-dimensional visualisation test built on mental rotation and perspective-taking.
Part 3 — Focused and sustained attention: a 25-minute test in which you monitor a monotonous development and respond to interruptions of the pattern — the score is your accuracy over time, not your best moment.

How to prepare

The goal of training is not perfection but graceful degradation: when overloaded, keep the primary task alive, shed the least important sub-task deliberately, and recover instead of freezing. Each SMO element has a matching game on the practice page — Path Following for the two-joystick course work, the Multitasking Test, Complex Choice Reaction, Spatial Awareness and the Vigilance Test for the rest. (Three-axis hand-eye-foot coordination is tested in the voorselectie, so train that game for the pre-selection day.) The Signal Detection Test mirrors the Schuhfried screen most often reported for the concentration element — four dots forming a square in a field of noise — and the M-TASK Multitasking Test covers Schuhfried's current-generation multitasking format, worth knowing in case AMC modernises this part of the battery. Train the attention game in full-length sessions: twenty-five minutes of monotony is a skill of its own. And arrive rested — sensorimotor performance is the first thing sleep deprivation destroys.

What the test looks like

A worked example from each exercise in this lesson, exactly as the test presents it.

Multitasking Test

Example: what the test looks like

You do two things at once. On one side you scan grids of four-digit numbers and mark both cells of every duplicate pair within a row. On the other, questions are spoken out loud — never shown — and you click the cell holding the answer. The short loop below plays itself: watch a spoken question get looked up and answered while a number pair is marked.

Auto-demo

0:00

“What profession does Elizabeth Carter have?”

Spoken · not shown

Numbers — mark both cells of every duplicate pair in a row

Answers — listen to the question, then click the right cell

Some questions are timed: instead of answering straight away you're told a moment on the clock — “answer at 2 minutes and 15 seconds” — and must click within ±5 seconds of it. The closer your timing, the more points.

In the real test the question is only heard, so headphones are required. Your score blends three streams — number grids, normal questions and timed questions — so you can't win by focusing on one and ignoring the others, and clicking far more answers than there are questions scales your score down.

Complex Choice Reaction Test

Spatial Awareness

Vigilance Test (VIGIL)

Path Following Test

Practice the relevant tests

Assessment-grade exercises to practice the relevant competences.

2:14

PilotVeterinarianTeacher

Multitasking Test

Two tasks at once: scan number grids for duplicate pairs while answering spoken questions from your phonebook, agenda, mental math and word categories — some of which must be answered at an exact moment on the clock.

6 minIntellectual

Complex Choice Reaction Test

Compare a target figure against four reference shapes and decide within 2.5 seconds whether it matches one of them.

5 minNeuro-Sensomotoric

Spatial Awareness

Visualise a 3D shape from a fixed viewpoint and pick the matching 2D view. Tests mental rotation and spatial perception under time pressure.

5 minNeuro-Sensomotoric

Space

2.5 s

Vigilance Test (VIGIL)

Test your attention and reaction speed. Detect when the moving circle skips a position.

10 minNeuro-Sensomotoric

2/5

Path Following Test

A hand-eye coordination test of fine-motor precision, built on the continuous path-tracking format used across pilot aptitude screening. Steer a dot along a winding track from the green start to the red end without drifting off the path. The same route repeats each round so your improvement is measurable.

4 minNeuro-SensomotoricGamepad

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