Researchers from ANU have found the brain can only process three moving objects at a given instant. Photo by Orangeacid:
The human brain can see only up to three moving objects at a given instant, new research has found. The discovery has important implications for road design and safety, driver and pilot training, industrial safety, fast-moving sports and other areas of human visual activity affecting safety and performance. 'We have found that there is a limit to the maximum number of directions, and hence distinct objects, that the human brain can see at any given instant in time,' said Dr Mark Edwards of The Vision Centre and The Australian National University. 'That limit is either two or three, depending upon how the directions are defined.' 'An example of this is when we're at a road roundabout: although we can see cars coming and going in different directions, we can't actually keep close tabs on more than three simultaneously. Rather, what the brain does is process them in series, like cars heading from the right, then in the roundabout, followed by cars on the left.' The same theory also applies to multi-tasking, said Dr Edwards: 'We may assume that people who are good at multitasking can process lots of different things at once, but what may be closer to the reality is that they are actually able to switch their attention faster to the next item.' Dr Edwards and Dr John Greenwood tested the brain's ability to detect signal directions using random-dot stimuli. These stimuli consisted of a field of scattered dots, with groups of intermingled dots moving in different directions. They found that people could not detect more than two signal directions at once if those signals moved in different directions.
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