'Red vs Blue' Tracking Your Team

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Psychologists at Johns Hopkins University have demonstrated that when players wear uniforms, it allows spectators, players and coaches at major sporting events to overcome humans' natural limit of tracking no more than three objects at a time. The common color of uniforms allows them to overcome the usual limit because they perceive separate individuals as a single set.

BALTIMORE--From the quarterback to the tight end ... From passing ... tackling ... offense .... defense ... Sometimes it's tough for fans to keep up with all the action!

Color helps the fans, refs and coaches stay focused on an action-packed game. But what if everyone was wearing the same color? Could you still pay attention to the game?

If it weren't for colored jerseys, the game could be hard to follow. Johns Hopkins University Psychologist Justin Halberda, Ph.D., says our brains have trouble keeping track of more than three objects -- or players -- at one time.

"It appears to be something fundamental about the way the brain is made, that attention is linked to three objects at once," Dr. Halberda tells Ivanhoe.

A new study at Johns Hopkins shows color is the key to grabbing your attention. When multiple players are in one color, the brain can keep track of several at once. Volunteers viewing a series of flashing colored dots could accurately count large numbers of dots of the same color.

"All of the sudden you're able to select all, say, 70 objects in your visual scene that share that color and pay attention to all of them at once," Dr. Halberda says.

He says color-coding also comes in handy everyday because keeping things in one color helps in keeping things organized and counting items quickly. "If you want to make life simple, make things the same color. If you want to keep track of many things at once, make them be the same color."

One thing's for sure, color makes watching sports simple, even when the plays are hard.

BACKGROUND: People can focus on more than three items at a time if those items share a common color. Psychologists at Johns Hopkins University have demonstrated that when players wear uniforms, it allows spectators, players and coaches at major sporting events to overcome humans' natural limit of tracking no more than three objects at a time. The common color of uniforms allows them to overcome the usual limit because they perceive separate individuals as a single set.

ABOUT THE STUDY: The Hopkins researchers asked undergraduate volunteers to view series of colored dots flashing onto a black computer screen for about one half second -- too fast to count the dots. The subjects were then asked to estimate the number of dots in one randomly selected set -- some of which contained as many as 35 dots -- on each trial. Half the time, the subjects were told in advance whether to pay attention to just the red dots, for example. Otherwise, the subjects were required to store as much information as possible in visual memory from what they saw briefly onscreen.

They found humans were unable to store information from more than three sets at once. However, dot counts were much more accurate when the given set contained three or fewer colors of dots.

The Human Factors and Ergonomics Society contributed to the information contained in the TV portion of this report.

Editor's Note: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.