When you’re driving through a busy intersection, how well can you track other cars, pedestrians, and everything else moving around you? Or if you’re chaperoning a field trip and you’re responsible for several children, how easy is it for you to keep an eye on all of them at the same time, and make sure none gets into too much trouble? Or if you’re playing basketball, soccer, or another sport, how well can you keep your eye on the ball and the other players all at once?
In each of these situations, the ability to divide your visual attention and track multiple objects is a requirement. Target Tracker is designed to challenge your brain to build divided attention by requiring you to track several items moving around your screen at the same time.
In Target Tracker, you will start by seeing a few target objects—bubbles, puffer fish, or jellyfish—appear on the screen. Then, many more “distracters” are added to the screen (more bubbles, puffer fish, or jellyfish). Your job: to keep track of the targets as all the objects move around the screen. When the objects stop moving, you click on each of the targets to identify them.
As you move through the cognitive training exercise, it gets harder in these ways:
- The objects travel more quickly, for longer amounts of time, and over larger areas.
- The contrast between the objects and the background decreases, making it harder to track the targets.
- The exercise adapts to your performance by changing the number of objects to track. It adds to the number if you’re successful and subtracts from the number if you’re struggling.
