Shell games, multiple object tracking and motion detection — free attention training
Tracking games ask you to keep your attention attached to one moving thing while identical things cross its path. It sounds trivial and it is not: attention can be dragged along with a moving object, but the attachment is fragile and every crossing is a chance to lose it.
Cup Shuffle, Find the Card, Hidden Coin and Magic Hat are all shell games — one object to follow through a series of swaps. Three items is comfortable for nearly everyone; the difficulty climbs steeply at four and five.
Follow the Dot is the multiple-object-tracking paradigm from attention research in its simplest one-target form. Dual Tracker is the two-zone version, which is much harder because attention has to be split across separate regions.
Motion Detector and Radar Scan are detection rather than tracking — spotting that something moved, rather than following something you already have.
Watch the object, not the gaps between objects. Tracking the empty space is the single commonest way people lose the target.
Do not blink during a swap. Almost every lost round happens at a crossing, and a blink at the wrong moment loses it outright.
Use soft focus rather than hard fixation. Peripheral vision handles motion better than the fovea does, and hard fixation makes you lose anything that leaves the centre.
If you genuinely lose the object, pick the one nearest where you last had it rather than guessing at random. That is worth several percentage points over a run.
Research puts the typical limit for tracking multiple objects at around three to five. That number is robust and it is why the four- and five-item rounds separate scores so sharply.
These tasks target the same visual tracking used to follow one player in a crowded sports field. Whether practice on a screen transfers to a real field is not established, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise. Treat these as a measure and as a genuinely enjoyable one.
No. In every shell game here the object stays where the animation puts it. There is no hidden substitution — the difficulty is entirely in your tracking.
Research puts the usual range at three to five in a single field. Splitting attention across two separate regions lowers it further.
Yes — free, instant, no signup.
Because at the crossing moment your attention has two equally good candidates and nothing to tell them apart. Essentially all tracking errors happen there.