tBackground: The 5 choice serial reaction time task (5CSRTT) is commonly used to assess attention inrodents. We sought to develop a variant of the 5CSRTT that would speed training to objective successcriteria, and to test whether this variant could determine attention capability in each subject.New method: Fisher 344 rats were trained to perform a variant of the 5CSRTT in which the durationof visual cue presentation (cue duration) was titrated between trials based upon performance. The cueduration was decreased when the subject made a correct response, or increased with incorrect responsesor omissions. Additionally, test day challenges were provided consisting of lengthening the intertrialinterval and inclusion of a visual distracting stimulus.Results: Rats readily titrated the cue duration to less than 1 s in 25 training sessions or less (mean ± SEM,22.9 ± 0.7), and the median cue duration (MCD) was calculated as a measure of attention threshold.Increasing the intertrial interval increased premature responses, decreased the number of trials com-pleted, and increased the MCD. Decreasing the intertrial interval and time allotted for consuming thefood reward demonstrated that a minimum of 3.5 s is required for rats to consume two food pellets andsuccessfully attend to the next trial. Visual distraction in the form of a 3 Hz flashing light increased theMCD and both premature and time out responses.Comparison with existing method: The titration variant of the 5CSRTT is a useful method that dynamicallymeasures attention threshold across a wide range of subject performance, and significantly decreases thetime required for training. Task challenges produce similar effects in the titration method as reported forthe classical procedure.Conclusions: The titration 5CSRTT method is an efficient training procedure for assessing attentionand can be utilized to assess the limit in performance ability across subjects and various schedulemanipulations.