Object Tracking

What Does the Object Tracking Test Measure?

This test uses the Multiple Object Tracking (MOT) paradigm, first described by Zenon Pylyshyn and Ron Storm in 1988. It measures attentional splitting — your ability to maintain active tracking of multiple moving targets simultaneously while ignoring visually identical distractors. Several balls are briefly highlighted as targets, then all balls begin moving identically. Your task is to maintain a mental model of where each target is, even as they intermingle with distractors.

Your score is the highest level reached before losing all 3 lives. Each level increases the number of targets to track and/or the speed of movement, systematically testing your attentional capacity ceiling.

How This Test Works

Target balls are highlighted briefly at the start of each trial. Then all balls turn identical and begin moving randomly inside the arena, bouncing off walls and each other. You must track the targets with your attention — without any visual cue to tell you which ones they are. When movement stops, click the balls you believe are the targets. Each wrong click costs one life; correct identification advances you to the next level.

The cognitive challenge is real: your attentional system must split across multiple spatial locations simultaneously, update continuously as targets move, and survive brief occlusions when balls pass close to or over each other. This is fundamentally different from tracking one fast object — it requires parallel spatial maintenance rather than serial scanning.

Why Multiple Object Tracking Matters

• Team sports: Basketball, football, hockey, and rugby players who score above level 6 on this test consistently show better field awareness — the ability to know where all relevant players are without explicitly looking at each one. Multiple object tracking capacity is one of the best predictors of "game sense" in fast team sports.
• Aviation and air traffic control: Pilots maintaining situational awareness of multiple aircraft, and controllers managing airspace, rely on exactly the same attentional splitting mechanism this test measures. MOT performance is used in some aviation selection programs as a screening tool.
• Action gaming: Action game players consistently outperform non-gamers on MOT tasks — often by 2–3 levels. Research by Daphne Bavelier’s lab at Rochester showed that 30 hours of action game play produces measurable improvements in MOT capacity that transfer to other attentional tasks.
• Fatigue monitoring: MOT capacity drops sharply with fatigue, more so than simple reaction time. Testing before and after shift work provides a sensitive real-time indicator of attention-related impairment.

Object tracking and sustained attention are closely related. Try our Sustained Attention Test for vigilance endurance, or our Processing Speed Test for visual discrimination speed under time pressure.

Object Tracking Scores by Percentile

Scores reflect the highest level reached. Level 1 starts with 1 target; each level adds complexity. Most adults plateau between levels 3–5.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the maximum number of objects humans can track?

Research using the MOT paradigm consistently finds a ceiling of 4–5 objects for most untrained adults, reflecting the number of FINST (Fingers of Instantiation) — pre-attentive spatial indexes — that the visual system can maintain simultaneously. Trained action gamers can reach 6–7 with consistent practice. Beyond ~7, the visual system lacks the physiological capacity to maintain independent tracking threads regardless of training.

Do action video games actually improve object tracking?

Yes, with strong evidence. Multiple peer-reviewed studies, most notably from Bavelier’s lab, found that 30 hours of action game play (not puzzle or strategy games) improves MOT performance by an average of 1–2 additional objects tracked. The effect is specific to action games because they require continuous, rapid multi-object tracking under time pressure — which directly trains the same system.

Why do balls crossing each other make tracking so much harder?

Occlusion events — when two balls pass close together or overlap — break the tracking index’s spatial lock on the target. The brain loses the continuous update of that ball’s position and must re-identify it from context. High-difficulty levels are engineered to maximize these occlusion events. Strategies like tracking the centroid of a target group rather than individual balls can partially compensate for this.

How does fatigue affect object tracking performance?

More than almost any other cognitive test. MOT requires sustained, active attentional engagement — there’s no passive processing component. Sleep-deprived individuals consistently score 2–3 levels lower than their well-rested baseline. Testing MOT performance before and after extended work shifts is used in occupational research as a direct measure of attentional impairment.

Is object tracking related to IQ?

Moderately. MOT correlates with measures of fluid intelligence (specifically, visual-spatial reasoning and sustained attention), but the relationship is far from deterministic. Athletic training, action game exposure, and sleep quality are much stronger predictors of MOT score than IQ alone. It’s a genuinely trainable skill rather than a fixed cognitive ability.