How this test works
10 dots appear and 2 of them are marked in blue for 2 seconds. Then the marks disappear and all 10 dots move around for 7 seconds, looking exactly alike. When they stop, pick the dots that were marked. The round ends when you have picked as many dots as there were marked ones; tap a picked dot again to change your mind before that.
Get every marked dot right and the next round has one more to follow, up to 6. Miss one and you get another try with new dots and a new starting layout. You have 2 tries at each level.
How the dots move
Every dot moves at the same constant speed, taking about 4.2 seconds to cross the width of the box. Dots bounce off the edges and off each other, so two dots never pass through one another. Without that, a crossing would leave you guessing which dot came out on which side, and the round would come down to luck.
The movement is measured in units of the box, not in pixels, so the dots take the same time to cross it on a phone as on a large monitor. If your device drops frames or you switch tabs, the movement pauses rather than jumping ahead, and the round still lasts the full 7 seconds of motion.
How we calculate your result
Your result is the largest number of dots you tracked in a fully correct round. If you got all 4 right in a round of 4 but then missed one twice at 5, your result is 4. The most you can score is 6. We also show how many rounds you played.
Tips
- Follow the dots with your eyes only. Pointing at the screen makes it a different, easier task.
- Some people find it easier to watch the middle of the group of marked dots instead of jumping from one dot to the next. Try both and see which works for you.
- Pay most attention when two dots bounce off each other; that is where tracks get swapped.
- On a phone, turn the brightness up and hold the screen at a comfortable reading distance.
Where the idea comes from
Multiple object tracking was introduced as a research task by Zenon Pylyshyn and Ron Storm in 1988, to study how many moving things people can keep track of at once. Our version is a short, simple take on that idea: one speed, one duration, and a fixed number of dots.
What this test does not measure
It shows how many dots you could follow at this speed, for this long, on your screen. Change any of those and the number would change. It isn't a clinical or psychological assessment, and it says nothing about attention in everyday life.
If you liked this, Visual Memory tests remembering a pattern that stays still, and Mental Rotation tests turning shapes in your head.