How Dancing With The Fireflies Targets Visual Attention

Have you ever tried catching fireflies as a child? Fireflies seem to move in a unique way when they are all together.

In this exercise, you must track and interpret the complex patterns made by the fireflies. You must then visualize the dance’s details to pick out which pattern the fireflies are making. For each series, you will have three tries to find the right dance the fireflies perform.

For an extra challenge, you can change the speed of the fireflies, the complexity, how many fireflies are present, and how fast they are dancing. 

This exercise targets visual attention and working memory by requiring you to track the trajectory of moving objects and anticipate their direction in your visual field. Using your prefrontal cortex, you must process and organize the incoming information along with analysis skills to recognize the patterns being generated in each sequence. You will also have to make a decision on where to focus your attention to better help you recognize and detect the patterns being generated in order to accurately pick them out of a sequence. 

In everyday life, we must detect patterns and remember visual information. For example,  you use visual attention to watch a sports game and keep track of players on a field, and you also use it to be mindful of other drivers on the road before transitioning lanes or making a turn. When people have difficulty paying attention and remembering visual information, they may not be able to follow along in a movie, show, or sports game or worse, act in a way that is unsafe to other people and themselves. This exercise will help you build the foundations for strategies to help you pay attention to details and recognize visual patterns more easily.