Dolly goes out of her two-story house, hears birds chirping and lawn mowers chopping. It's a nice spring day for Dolly . . .

Or was her name Molly? And what color was her house? I know I'll soon be asked simple review questions about the story I'm listening to, and in the Memory Disorders Center of the University of Miami, I'm sweating. If it weren't enough that I'm being thrown obscure details of an aimless story, a seasoned brain fitness champ, A. Jay Schwartz, 81, stands stooped over my shoulder, telling me the games may seem easy now but will soon get harder.

At Sparks of Genius in Boca Raton, I click a mouse each time I hear or see the number one. Easy enough. Then the soft, female voice that had been saying ''one'' every few seconds now throws in an occasional ''two.'' Click the mouse after the wrong numbers, and a large ''WHOOPS'' pops up on the screen. After 15 brow-furrowing minutes of staring at the numbers popping up on the screen, Rohn Kessler, Sparks' founder, zippily sprints out my ''A.Q.'' report -- my attention quotient.

I find out that I scored a 100 percent on my visual attention scale, but a dismal 74.9 percent on my auditory focus. I have one reported incident of a ''hyperactive event,'' which sounds either embarrassing or unhealthy. I waffle on whether to hang this report card on the fridge.

My brain a little worn and my ego somewhat bruised, I sat with Kim Johnson, my personal trainer for a few minutes, at BrainAerobics in Dania Beach. We play ''My Name is Alice,'' in which pictures pop up and I need to click the first letter of the word that describes it. ''You did fabulously!'' Johnson encourages me, politely not mentioning that she offered me many of the answers. I was doing well until I missed ''candelabra,'' and was then offered a pittance -- ''flower'' -- on the next slide.

With a cursory sampling of the tests and games, I should have no reason to feel more cognitively fit. But the confidence of those around me -- like Schwartz, who asserts that he has truly learned to focus since starting his brain fitness regimen -- starts to catch on.

When I ask Michael Marsiske, a University of Florida professor who studies cognition, if these programs might have little scientific background and positive results could be due to self-efficacy, he seems taken aback. My question was flawed, he says, since self-efficacy is completely scientific, an ``evidenced-based belief we have in ourselves based on our past performances.''

In other words, confidence can pay cognitive dividends.

-- TAYLOR BARNES