Attention
Multiple Object Tracking
Also called: MOT task, multiple object tracking task, multiple-object tracking, attentive tracking task
Measure how many moving objects participants can follow at once as 2 to 5 of ten identical dots flash, move and are picked out when they stop.
7-9 minTimed: desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad
Free to start: 10 free participants per account, then $0.99 per participant for academic research, or any yearly plan. Preview any test free after you sign up.
- Papers, 2021 to 2025
- 68
- Evidence grade
- C
- Registered clinical studies
- 7
What it measures
Measures how many moving objects a person can follow at once. Two to five of ten identical dots flash, then all the dots move for 6.5 seconds, and participants click the dots that flashed. The main score is the share of flashed dots found.
Constructs
- Attentive tracking
- Attentional capacity
- Selective attention
- Dynamic visual attention
Research uses
- Attention research
- Aging research
- Within-study group comparison
How the paradigm works
Multiple object tracking measures how many moving objects a person can follow with attention at once (Pylyshyn and Storm, 1988). Ten identical white dots appear in a dark arena. Two to five of them flash for 2 seconds, then all ten move for 6.5 seconds at one fixed speed, each turning a little at random and bouncing off the walls and the other dots. When the dots stop, the participant clicks the dots that flashed, and each picked dot turns blue. Picking every target is the mark-all method (Hulleman, 2005); Clark and colleagues (2022) used it with the same flash and motion times.
More about the paradigm
The standard session has 3 practice trials, after which green rings show the targets, then 24 trials: 2, 3, 4 and 5 targets 6 times each (4 to 10 as a setting), in runs that hold each number once, in an order drawn from the session's seed. The speed is 100 px per second as standard (2.5 degrees per second at the platform's working figure of 40 px per degree), or 60 or 160 px per second as a setting. It is the same on every trial, and nothing a participant does changes a later trial. Each trial's paths come from the seed and are shown by elapsed time, so a slow frame never changes them.
The main score is the share of targets found, averaged over trials. The share at each number of targets shows how tracking falls as targets are added; picking at random finds 20% of the targets with 2 targets and 50% with 5. The share of trials with every target found, the time to the first pick and the display timing are also reported. How many objects can be tracked depends on their speed (Alvarez and Franconeri, 2007), and older adults track fewer targets than young adults (Trick, Perl and Sethi, 2005). Scores support research and do not diagnose.
Scores
- Tracking Accuracy%
- Mean over trials of the share of targets picked.
- Higher is better; picking at random gives 0.2 to 0.5
- Accuracy by Number of Targets%
- Share of targets picked with 2, 3, 4 and 5 targets.
- Falls as targets are added
- All Targets Found%
- Share of trials with every target picked.
- Higher is better
- Time to First Pickms
- Median time from the stop to the first pick, over picks at or after 100 ms.
- Informational
- Anticipationscount
- Trials whose first pick came under 100 ms after the stop, left out of the scores.
- More than max(2, 20%) of trials makes the session invalid
- Early Clickscount
- Clicks before the dots stopped, which pick nothing.
- Informational
- Frame Intervalms
- Median time between screen frames.
- Set by the screen
- Dropped Frame Rate%
- Share of frames the browser dropped while the dots moved.
- Above 0.05 is flagged for review
- Completed Trialscount
- Test trials with every pick made.
- Informational
- Planned Trialscount
- Test trials planned by the settings.
- Informational
Use and evidence
68 papers from 2021 to 2025 name this task in their title or abstract, down 20% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 228 of 395 test families in our census. See the counts for every test.
Show the numbers
| Year | Papers |
|---|---|
| 2025 | 18 |
| 2024 | 9 |
| 2023 | 10 |
| 2022 | 13 |
| 2021 | 18 |
| 2020 | 24 |
| 2019 | 12 |
| 2018 | 18 |
| 2017 | 14 |
| 2016 | 17 |
| 2015 | 13 |
| 2014 | 5 |
| 2013 | 6 |
| 2012 | 16 |
| 2011 | 13 |
| 2010 | 31 |
| 2009 | 9 |
| 2008 | 7 |
| 2007 | 5 |
| 2006 | 3 |
| 2005 | 5 |
| 2004 | 5 |
| 2003 | 1 |
| 2002 | 0 |
| 2001 | 2 |
| 2000 | 0 |
Use grade D
30 to 99 papers from 2021 to 2025.
Evidence grade C
At least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies.
- Papers on test-retest reliability
- 2
- Papers on reliability or validity
- 11
- Registered clinical studies using it as an outcome
- 7
Note on the counts: also a computer-vision term so the phrases are narrow.
How the grades work
Use: A is 1,000 or more papers from 2021 to 2025, B 300 to 999, C 100 to 299, D 30 to 99 and E fewer than 30. Evidence: A means at least 25 papers report its test-retest reliability and at least 25 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome; B, at least 8 test-retest papers, and either 5 registered clinical studies or 150 reliability or validity papers; C, at least 2 test-retest papers, 30 reliability or validity papers or 3 registered clinical studies; D, little published measurement evidence found. The counts measure use. They include every paper that names the task in its title or abstract. Grades describe the published research on this task, not ConductCognition's version of it.
Source: ConductCognition test census 0.14.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
Task design
The trial sequence as the test runs in ConductCognition.
- Display
- Ten identical white dots 32 px across in a dark arena of 560 by 420 px. All stay still and white for 500 ms, the targets flash yellow for 2,000 ms, then all the dots move for 6,500 ms.
- Motion
- Every dot moves at one fixed speed, turning by up to 0.1 radian at random every 1/60 s and bouncing off the walls and off any dot within 56 px: 100 px per second (standard), 60 or 160 px per second, the same on every trial.
- Answer
- When the dots stop, click the dots that flashed. A click within 24 px of a dot picks it and turns it blue, and the trial ends once as many dots are picked as flashed, with no time limit.
- Trials
- 2, 3, 4 and 5 targets, 6 times each (standard, 4 to 10), in runs that hold each number once, in an order drawn from the session's seed: 24 trials, with a rest after every 12.
- Practice
- 3 trials with 2, 3 and 4 targets; after each, green rings show the targets for 2,500 ms. The test gives no feedback.
- Fixed settings
- The speed and the numbers of targets are set before the session, and nothing a participant does changes a later trial: there is no staircase and no training mode, on a flat 2D display.
- Score
- The share of targets picked, averaged over trials and at each number of targets. Trials whose first pick came under 100 ms after the stop leave the score.
Sizes and speeds are in screen pixels, so they depend on the screen; compare results within studies that use the same settings and similar screens. The dots move on every screen frame, so the test runs on a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. The scores support research and do not diagnose.
Quality checks
Each session is marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason, before you see its scores.
Scored rows: multiple_object_tracking_test from the scored run, one response per pick, graded from the saved targets and picks. A pick is a target by chance with the number of targets over the number of dots (2 to 5 of 10): fewer target picks than chance invalidates and not more than chance is flagged. There is no time limit. First picks under 100 ms after the dots stop: more than max(2, 20%) of trials invalidate, and any is flagged. A run short of its planned trials, or more than 5% of motion frames dropped, is flagged for review.
Why these rules
Accuracy significantly below chance (one-sided exact test, p < .05) cannot come from guessing; it means the response mapping was reversed or the task was not followed (Slick, Sherman and Iverson 1999 treat below-chance forced-choice performance as definite response bias). Chance-level accuracy can be a real result in impaired participants, so it is only flagged. Picking at random finds targets at the rate of targets among the dots, so fewer than that means the dots that did not flash were tracked. A first pick under 100 ms cannot follow from where the dots stopped, so such trials follow the platform's anticipation rule and leave the score. The motion is the design, so a display that dropped frames changed what was shown.
Running this test
Settings you can change
| Setting | Standard | Allowed |
|---|---|---|
| Dot speed | 100 px per second (standard) | 100 px per second (standard), 60 px per second, 160 px per second |
| Trials per number of targets | 6 | 4 to 10 |
Yearly plans can change settings within these limits. Free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Need a setting this test does not have?
Devices and languages
- Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. Participant devices
- Languages: English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese.
- Available on: Every plan, including the free plan.
- Recruiting online? See the setup guides for Prolific, Sona Systems, CloudResearch Connect and Qualtrics.
Cite and describe
Participants completed the Multiple Object Tracking task in a web browser (ConductCognition task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0; Pylyshyn and Storm, 1988), with the standard settings (dot speed: 100 px per second; trials per number of targets: 6). The main score was tracking accuracy (mean over trials of the share of targets picked).
ConductCognition versions: task version 1.0.0, scoring version 1.0.0. Every export records the versions each session used, for a methods section.
- Pylyshyn, Z. W., & Storm, R. W. (1988). Tracking multiple independent targets: Evidence for a parallel tracking mechanism. Spatial Vision, 3(3), 179-197. https://doi.org/10.1163/156856888X00122Tracking up to 5 of 10 identical moving objects.
- Hulleman, J. (2005). The mathematics of multiple object tracking: From proportions correct to number of objects tracked. Vision Research, 45(17), 2298-2309. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.visres.2005.02.016The mark-all method.
- Clark, K., Birch-Hurst, K., Pennington, C. R., Petrie, A. C. P., Lee, J. T., & Hedge, C. (2022). Test-retest reliability for common tasks in vision science. Journal of Vision, 22(8), 18. https://doi.org/10.1167/jov.22.8.18Targets that flash for 2 seconds, then 6.5 seconds of motion at 2.5 degrees per second, and a click on each target.
- Alvarez, G. A., & Franconeri, S. L. (2007). How many objects can you track? Evidence for a resource-limited attentive tracking mechanism. Journal of Vision, 7(13), 14. https://doi.org/10.1167/7.13.14Speed changes how many objects can be tracked.
- Trick, L. M., Perl, T., & Sethi, N. (2005). Age-related differences in multiple-object tracking. The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, 60(2), P102-P105. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/60.2.P102Young and older adults tracking 1 to 4 of 10 moving items.
- Meyerhoff, H. S., Papenmeier, F., & Huff, M. (2017). Studying visual attention using the multiple object tracking paradigm: A tutorial review. Attention, Perception, & Psychophysics, 79(5), 1255-1274. https://doi.org/10.3758/s13414-017-1338-1
Source papers
- Pylyshyn and Storm (1988): the task. Hulleman (2005): the mark-all method. Clark et al. (2022): the flash and motion times. Trick, Perl and Sethi (2005): young and older adults.Paradigm source, Adults
Questions
How long does the Multiple Object Tracking take?
About 7 to 9 minutes, as listed in the test library.
What device does a participant need?
Timed test: participants need a desktop or laptop with a mouse or trackpad. The browser must be Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari.
What scores does it produce?
Tracking Accuracy, Accuracy by Number of Targets, All Targets Found, Time to First Pick, Anticipations, Early Clicks, Frame Interval, Dropped Frame Rate, Completed Trials and Planned Trials. Each session is also marked valid, needs review or invalid, with the reason.
How widely is the Multiple Object Tracking used in research?
68 papers from 2021 to 2025 name it in their title or abstract, down 20% compared with 2016 to 2020. That ranks it 228 of 395 test families in the ConductCognition test census (use grade D). Source: ConductCognition test census 0.14.0, counted 31 October 2026 from OpenAlex and ClinicalTrials.gov.
How much reliability evidence does the Multiple Object Tracking have?
In the published research, 2 papers report its test-retest reliability and 7 registered clinical studies use it as an outcome (evidence grade C in the ConductCognition test census).
Which settings can a researcher change?
Dot speed (100 px per second (standard), 60 px per second, 160 px per second) and trials per number of targets (4 to 10). Settings can be changed on yearly plans; free and pay-as-you-go studies use the standard settings.
Which languages can participants use?
Participants can take this test in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese (Simplified) and Japanese. English is on every plan, and the other languages come with yearly plans. Have a native speaker read the machine-translated text before launch.
Is this a clinical test?
No. ConductCognition is for research use only. It runs, scores and exports the test; clinical interpretation is outside the platform.
Every test: the full test list.
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